


The House On Tealeaf Hill

by CrunchyWrites



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: DnD races, Edwardian Era but DnD edition and written by someone who knows nothing about the Edwardian Era, Ghost!Molly, I know molly is dead in this but it ends nicely okay you just have to trust me, Inspired by The Woman In Black, Last Will And Testament Executor!Caleb, M/M, Mystery, gothic horror, there’s a happy ending in this absolutely guaranteed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2020-05-31 18:44:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 143,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19431913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrunchyWrites/pseuds/CrunchyWrites
Summary: Business is business. Everything in it's proper place, everything done in it's certain way, everything sorted stamped and filed correctly, just the way it's supposed to be. Caleb's job as an executor is orderly and neat, and he likes it that way, because the other half of the job is people and people are messy, emotional creatures who get in the way of neat and orderly. It seems the perfect job, then, when he's handed the task of executing the will of one Lord Gustav, a man whose family is already deceased or long, long disappeared into the cracks of the world. Find the missing will, execute it, and return home, job complete.Except, when he arrives at Tealeaf Manor, it seems that the house’s former inhabitants haven't quite moved on...





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recommended music: Just the entire soundtrack of [The Woman In Black](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxWU1zfgxjQ&list=OLAK5uy_kAA2AfPNQi3byI6CtCHGwDFkb10FNmePI)

The house on Tealeaf Hill was old, and abandoned, and adorned with vines that clung to the crumbling stonework like the fingers of countless strange, unnatural hands. It sat on a slight rise above the village of Alfield, accessible only by taking a carriage up the twisting, winding drive that wound its way up the hill. You could walk through the woods that surrounded it, of course, could catch your coat on the brambles that lay as thick as autumn fog above the ground, could risk your ankles to any number of hidden trenches and ditches and dead, abandoned rabbit-holes, but you wouldn’t want to. You could venture out alone onto the cobbled drive, could walk over the old flint stones and hear them scraping against your boots, could feel the mist that lay tangled in the bone-white branches sighing against your skin, but you wouldn’t feel safe. You wouldn’t feel content. No matter the time, no matter the hour, there was a darkness that lived above and within the hill, making every shadow darker, making every sound simultaneously quieter and louder. No one in the village went to the house anymore. No one had good reason to, not since the old homeowner had died and his son had left the village entirely, off to some far-off city away from the gloom that plagued his home.

No one visited the house. No one made the journey up the drive. Even the groundskeeper, an ageless firbolg whose family had tended to the land for generations, preferred to stay within his dwelling just outside the boundary of the forest. Alone, abandoned, the house slowly fell into itself. Paint faded. Dust gathered. Spiders made their homes amongst the once-sparkling chandeliers until they, too, eventually died.

The house on Tealeaf Hill was old, and abandoned, and silent. The house on Tealeaf Hill, the villagers said, was haunted. The house on Tealeaf Hill was cursed, was blighted, was unsafe for any living being.

There were no living beings in the house. Not anymore.

But all the same, deep within the house, amidst the rotting furniture and peeling wallpaper, something waited.

\---

Caleb Widogast stared down at the papers laid out before him. “Alfield?” he asked. “You need me to go to Alfield?”

On the other side of the desk, Bryce nodded. “That’s right.”

“ _Why_?”

“For the same reason we need you to go anywhere, Caleb – there is a last will and testament to be carried out, and for that we need to send someone to perform it. You just so happen to be available, and you have a reputation for efficiency within the company.”

Caleb frowned, fiddling absently with the papers before him. They rustled against each other quietly, filling the air with the whispering of paper and ink. “Thank you, but … Bryce, you are aware that this is not exactly my area of expertise? I do not do so well with speaking to grieving partners-”

Bryce waved a hand, cutting him off. “Don’t worry about that,” they said reassuringly. “According to our last executor, there is no family left. All you will need to do is locate the last will, see that it is appropriately carried out as best possible, and ensure that the house is in reasonable condition should we fail to locate a next of kin, or whoever it is that Lord Gustav bequeathed the house to.”

Caleb nodded. That should all be doable enough – this was hardly the first time he had had to enter a now-abandoned building in order to seek out a will that the author, be it through reclusion, spite, or some other cause, had failed to pass along to anyone. The creaks and groans of abandoned properties no longer held any fear for him; the strange, still air of a recently departed residence no longer made him feel like a trespasser. He was just a man doing his job, and it wasn’t like the dead were watching and judging as he rooted through their possessions. They were deceased, passed on, no longer of this world. When he worked it was just him, and whatever rodents and vermin had taken up residence in the vacant spaces.

When he worked, it was quiet and peaceful. Death held no surprises for him anymore.

Caleb leaned forwards a little in his chair, getting a better view of the papers laid out before him. It was common practise for the last known next of kin to be recorded somewhere evident and apparent, saving time and hassle for the executor and family both, but after a quick, cursory glance, he couldn’t find any mention of one. He skimmed the papers again, more closely this time. Details of the estate, the departure of Lord Gustav, mention of his children… those were all present, but a specific next of kin was not. And given how much aristocratic families bickered, it would be unwise to assume.

Which meant that, at least according to what Caleb could see, the next of kin was a complete unknown.

“Bryce?” Caleb asked, not even looking up as he addressed the elf who was his employer. It was only familiarity, familiarity and time, that allowed him to address Bryce as Bryce, instead of as Mx Feelid. He’d been working for Bryce for a long, long time at this point, and he was good at his job. 

Across the table, Bryce hummed. “Yes, Caleb?”

“Is there no known next of kin?” Caleb asked curiously. “This- this looks like a rather large estate, Bryce. They would have been known within the local community, _ja_?”

“They were.”

“So surely, even without the will, we would be able to identify some relatives. Children, siblings, cousins, a partner?”

Bryce shrugged. “As I said, the last executor told us that there is no family left. She was very thorough with checking the village records, I am sure. Lord Gustav Fletching never took a partner, though he did adopt a son - two, in fact. A master Lucien Tealeaf and a master Mollymauk Tealeaf.”

“Different surnames?” Caleb asked curiously.

“Apparently so. According to what we know, he felt it was important that they keep their heritage, and so he permitted them to keep the surnames they had had previously. They were still considered his family, but when the estate was due to pass to the elder – Mollymauk – it would become the Tealeaf estate. However, that never happened.”

“Why not? What happened to them?”

“Master Mollymauk died many years ago, and Master Lucien has not been heard from in almost as long.” Bryce reached out, tapping the papers that Caleb’s hand still rested on. “But, currently, they are not your concern, Mr Widogast. Locate the will, see if anyone is named, and follow up from there. There is a process to this, Caleb. You know that.”

“I do,” Caleb muttered. He looked down at the papers again, shifting his hand slightly to read the words that ran across the page. It wasn’t a handwriting that he immediately recognised – Bryce had a distinctive fine, copperplate script, but the text written here was messy and hurried, barely legible even to Caleb’s trained eyes.

Bryce followed Caleb’s gaze. “As I said – the last executor failed to find any remaining family. She wrote very comprehensive notes, though. There should be plenty of material present to allow you to familiarise yourself with the family and the estate.”

Caleb paused. He’d thought he’d misheard Bryce the first time around, but apparently not. He felt the back of his neck prickle and looked up, frowning slightly at Bryce’s bowed head. “…the _last_ executor?” he asked warily.

Bryce hummed, raising an elegant, elven eyebrow without looking up. “Yes?”

“Bryce, the _last_ executor? You said there was a previous one. What happened to her?”

Bryce gave a short sigh, looking up from the desk. “She failed to locate the will,” they said, shrugging. “That’s all, Caleb. She could not locate the will, and so we decided that we would need to send someone else in.” They raised their pen slightly, pointing it towards him. “And we chose you. You said it yourself, Caleb – grieving partners are not your area of expertise. Locating and recovering lost documents, however… that, for reasons unknown to any of us, _is_. You are exactly the man we need to execute the Fletching estate.” They lowered their pen, nodding towards the open briefcase on the table. “You will find all the other necessary documents in there, as well as an allowance for travel and food. Provided you accept the job, of course.”

They raised an eyebrow, giving Caleb a look that he well recognised. Bryce already knew – they _both_ already knew – that he was going to accept the job. Of course he was going to accept the job. Rexxentrum was an expensive city, and though being an executor definitely paid better than many of the other jobs available in the smoke and soot-laden city, it still only barely provided enough for him to keep his modest, three-room flat, and to look after himself and Frumpkin. He couldn’t afford to pass on jobs, and especially not ones where he didn’t have to worry about correct composure, and responding appropriately to grief, and relating to people. He struggled with that – he always had – but he liked the nice, methodical process of searching for and then carrying out a will. He had his skills, and his tricks, and he knew that this was something that he could do. This was something that he was good at.

And, beyond his still-lingering concern over the previous executor sent to work on this job, there was no good reason for him to turn it down. It was just a job, even if it was in a part of the Empire that he’d never been to before. But that was one of the advantages of working for Feelis Executors: Handlers and Recorders of Final Wills and Testaments – he always got to see new places, even if only briefly.

Caleb sighed. “Fine,” he muttered. “I will- fine, _ja_ , I will go to Alfield.”

Bryce smiled. “Thank you, Caleb.”

“When do you need me to depart?”

“As soon as possible, if you’d be so kind. This situation with the Fletching estate has already gone on for long enough. I believe that there will be a train departing in the next few hours – you should have enough time to pack.”

“And Frumpkin will-”

“Yes, you will be able to take your cat with you. The house has been abandoned for years, to the best of my knowledge. There should be no one there to mind his presence.” They gave a short laugh. “In fact, he may be of great assistance in clearing out any vermin.”

Caleb quirked a slight smile at that. His beloved cat was far from a rat-catcher, but he couldn’t deny that it was good to have him around to keep the rodents at bay. The last thing he needed when hunting for a will was mice scurrying over his shoes. “Good,” he said simply. “There is a train soon, you said?”

“That is correct. I have already telegrammed on ahead to let the groundskeeper know that you will be arriving – he should be able to provide you with a key.”

Caleb raised an eyebrow.

“…Well, we telegrammed on ahead to let him know that _someone_ would be arriving,” Bryce admitted. “I was hoping that it would be you, though.”

“Were you?”

“Of course. You are very good at your job, Caleb. We both know this.” They sat up a bit straighter, tucking sheets into the briefcase and snapping it shut before passing it to him. “Thanks to our previous executor we’ve already been putting together some details on the family which may help to inform you as to the situation, and perhaps locate a possible next of kin or give some indication of where to find Master Lucien. Now, be on your way, Mr Widogast. No time like the present.”

Caleb nodded and rose, crossing to the door of Bryce’s office. He already had more or less everything he needed – he had the paperwork, and his destination, and it would take him little more than an hour at most to go home and pack, and then he’d be on his way to-

Caleb paused, one hand still on the doorknob. “…Bryce?” he asked, half-turning to look back at them.

“Yes?”

“You didn’t mention anything about an allowance for accommodation. Where will I be staying?”

Bryce looked up, smiling slightly. “Oh,” they said, “you’ll be staying at the house, of course.”

\---

The train journey to Alfield was not a short one. Within a few hours of leaving Bryce’s office, Caleb had packed up what belongings he would need and caught the first train of several to the small village in the middle of nowhere, being warned by the ticketmaster about the length of the journey; it wouldn’t be quite long enough to necessitate sleeper carts, but it would still be nearly nightfall by the time that he arrived.

Caleb didn’t have a problem with that. He didn’t particularly mind long train journeys, and besides, this one would give him enough time to look over the documents that Bryce had provided.

The carriage he chose to sit in was a nearly-empty one, populated only by a handful of other passengers who slowly disembarked as the train grew nearer and nearer to its destination, and by the time he boarded his final train in the gentle, persistent drizzle, there was no one else in the carriage but him, sheets of paper spread out on the table before him and Frumpkin dozing contentedly in an empty seat to his side. The soft chuffing of the train and rumble of the wheels provided a pleasant background noise to his reading, keeping him half-grounded in reality as, before his eyes, the history of the house unfolded itself.

It had not always been the Fletching estate, he learned. Some fifteen years ago, the manor had been known as the Lionett House, referred to by the locals as Lionett Hill due to the land that it possessed and the small hill that the house had been built atop of. It had been home to a family of wealthy, aristocratic merchants who had made their fortune in the wine trade in Kamordah and had, for reasons unknown, decided to move to Alfield. Details on them were scarce, but from what Caleb gleaned the family didn’t dwell in Alfield for too long, buying a newer, larger home closer to Rexxentrum after a number of years. After that, the house was vacant for a while, before being purchased by Lord Gustav.

Caleb hummed to himself quietly as he ran his finger down the paper. There was no image of Lord Gustav – that much was to be expected – but even then the description of him was surprisingly light. For a lord, and a lord of a manor at that, there was little, if any mention of his past, of where he came from, of how he had the money to purchase such a large and splendid home. Because it _was_ a splendid home, by all accounts; it sat alone on a small hill among acres of private land, with extensive gardens, a small stables, and even a groundskeeper to tend to the estate. The house itself was large and sprawling – it wasn’t huge, not really, but it was large and expansive enough to easily boast sufficient bedrooms to keep a fair number of guests, as well as a smaller set of servant’s quarters towards the back of the house. It was, by all rights, a beautiful home. Caleb could barely imagine how much it had cost.

Given the incredible lack of detail on Lord Gustav’s past, he could barely imagine how the half-elf had come to purchase it. Inheritance, he assumed. Elves were a long-lived race, with plenty of time for them to accumulate money, but even then they tended to stick with their families, no matter how many generations they spanned. But not Lord Gustav, apparently. Perhaps it was his half-elf heritage. Perhaps not.

Caleb flicked to another sheet of paper. He hadn’t been mistaken – there was no mention of family on Lord Gustav’s side. No partner, no siblings, no recorded parents or aunts or uncles or _anyone._ Whoever the man was, he’d arrived out of nowhere to purchase the house and, according to all accounts, settle in to live a comfortable, reasonably quiet life with his adopted sons.

Ah, yes. The sons.

Caleb turned another page, the rustle of the paper barely audible over the sound of the train. Unlike Lord Gustav, there was plenty of information about the children he had adopted. They were twins, and tieflings at that. That gave Caleb pause. Tieflings weren’t exactly a common sight, even in Rexxentrum where the city’s human population was almost outweighed by the combined populations of elves, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings. There were even a number of half-orcs and dragonborns in Rexxentrum, just enough that Caleb was more or less accustomed to seeing them, but tieflings… tieflings were rare.

Out in Alfield, a tiny village that barely registered on the map, he could barely imagine how strange people must have found them.

He supposed that explained the seclusion. One of the twins, Lucien, was apparently rarely seen at all, save by those who worked at the manor or made food deliveries. According to local gossip, he was a reclusive, nervous child, intelligent and bright but seldom seen outside the safety of the manor or its grounds. He, like his twin brother, was in possession of many of the most common tiefling traits – they both had purple skin, spade-tipped tails, and twisting horns that curled like those of a ram, any one of which would have been more than enough to mark them as Other in the eyes of the village folk. Apparently, one of the few things to distinguish the two twins was their sense of dress. Mollymauk, the elder twin by all of eleven minutes, had quickly become known for his bright, gaudy fashion sense, so very different to his brother’s preference for muted, more refined colours and styles. He was the more confident of the two as well, gradually garnering a reputation for sneaking out of the house and making his way into the village, where he would play with the other children until his father came to collect him. Of the two, it was always Mollymauk who was mentioned in the village’s local newspaper. Lucien was rarely heard of, beyond the occasional mention of his position as Mollymauk’s brother.

What nervousness Lucien may have had as a child, though, apparently waned as he grew older. By the time the twins were both 16 – some four years after being adopted by Lord Gustav – they had become a not uncommon sight in the town. Lucien rarely seemed to stray far from his brother, who could apparently be found regularly at the village’s single bar, spending time drinking and conversing with the small, strange group of friends he had accumulated. Gradually, over the next few years, the twins naturally drifted apart somewhat, with Lucien starting to spend more time away from his brother and off doing his own thing. Mollymauk, too, seemed to continue to differentiate himself from his twin – he acquired a set of tattoos, the most notable of which being a peacock that curled down his shoulder and arm from his cheek. The twins were still close, and evidently fond of each other and of their father, but they were quite simply different people, as siblings so often are. They were known and recognised within the town, their father was gradually seen more and more, even hosting the occasional party or dinner for members of the village, and, on the whole, it looked like Tealeaf Hill would continue to be called Tealeaf Hill for the foreseeable future.

And then, one night, Mollymauk died.

Caleb rested his forehead against his hand as he turned the pages, barely noticing the rain starting to cease. Mollymauk Tealeaf, perhaps not friend to all but definitely enemy to none, had died in a bar brawl. Details on it were scarce, but from what Caleb could glean an insult had turned into a scuffle which had taken itself to a back alley, where Mollymauk Tealeaf had shortly found himself purseless, breathless, and lifeless. The culprit had never been apprehended or seen, though people present in the bar were able to confirm that it was no one from the village. Whoever had killed Mollymauk, whoever had indirectly caused the demise of Lord Gustav, was a stranger to all.

Mollymauk had received an obituary in the paper. Not just the local village paper, either – the nearby industrial town of Zadash had also chose to mention his death, giving a kind but nonetheless vague report of his life until his passing. He was described as a bright, cheerful fellow, well-liked by the town of Alfield and known for his merriment, mischief, and kindness. His funeral was well attended, with his father, brother, and a few of his friends speaking at his burial.

And then, after that, there was nothing. Caleb flicked back and forth through the papers, frowning to himself. After Molly died, there was practically no mention of the remaining Tealeaf or of his father. It seemed that, with the death of one of the twins, the entire remaining family fell quiet, alone in their manor until, out of the blue, Lord Gustav too passed away a few years later. Grief, the coroners report recorded it as. Nothing self-inflicted, nothing that would implicate another in anyway. He simply died one night, still in mourning for his son.

His other son was never seen or heard from again.

Caleb stared down at the papers as the train slowly rolled to a stop. That was where the story of the house on Tealeaf Hill ended, apparently, with the death of a son followed by the death of his father and the absence of his brother. No other family appeared in the picture, no other mentions of the Tealeafs were made. There was just an empty house, the body of Lord Gustav having been respectfully removed and buried at the small cemetery on the estate, the funeral attended by barely more than half a dozen people.

A sudden, sharp knocking against the window of his carriage startled Caleb out of his thoughts. He looked up abruptly, quickly catching sight of a train attendant through the window.

“Your stop, sir!” they said, tilting their head towards the sign at the platform: _Alfield Train Station_. “Best get out now, or you’ll end up in Trostenwald.”

“Ah, _ja_ , thank you!” Caleb replied, hoping that his words carried through the pane of glass. He quickly scrambled the papers back into the briefcase and woke Frumpkin, making sure he was safely back in his carry case before standing and exiting the train in time to see the attendants removing his luggage. He hadn’t brought much with him, and even with the ungainly shape of Frumpkin’s case he was still able to make his way to the front of the station. There were no coaches immediately waiting, but the gathering evening air was still and cool, the rain having passed to leave little more than a refreshing breeze in its wake. Caleb took his bags over to one of the benches and sat down, watching how the flickering lamplight caught on the puddles gathered between the cobbles and bricks. He didn’t mind a short wait. As long as he was at the house by nightfall, he was content.

Caleb sat quietly, absently wishing that the lamplight was bright enough for him to be able to read by. At the corner of his hearing he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and glancing up he saw a young tiefling woman approaching, dressed in clothes that looked rather more dramatic than he felt would really be practical in a country village such as Alfield. The tiefling caught his eye with a smile, sitting down next to him on the bench.

“Hi!” the tiefling said, smiling brightly. Caleb didn’t smile back, too caught off-balance by the fact that someone was speaking to him in a public environment. “Are you waiting for a coach, too?”

“I, uh, _ja_ ,” Caleb muttered, looking away.

“Nice! Where are you heading?”

Caleb coughed awkwardly. “Uh, Alfield?” He didn’t mean for it to sound like a question, but he couldn’t understand where else a coach arriving at Alfield Train Station _would_ take him.

The tiefling didn’t seem to realise his confusion. She just gave a little hop, her blue hair bouncing around her face. “Oh, so am I! Maybe we can share a coach! Save some money! I’m Jester, by the way.”

Before Caleb could react, a blue hand was thrust out towards him. He took it automatically, giving it a polite shake. “Caleb Widogast.”

“Are you new to Alfield, Mr Widogast?”

“Just visiting.”

“Ooh, seeing family? How long are you going to be here?”

Caleb shook his head. “ _Nein_ , not family. I am here on business. I do not know when I will be leaving.”

“Ooh, how _mysterious_ ,” Jester replied, grinning wider as the sound of an approaching cart filled the air. She stood up, offering her hand to help Caleb up, and approached the cart the moment it drew to a stop. It was immediately obvious that she knew the coachman – she gave him a bright, cheery wave which he immediately returned.

“Evenin’, Jester,” the coachman said, tipping his hat. Jester smiled back widely, climbing up into the card.

“Good evening, Horris!” she replied happily.

“Headed into town, are you?”

“Of course I am.” Jester sat down, fluffing her skirts, and then caught Caleb’s eye, patting the space next to her. “Come on, Mr Widogast! We can split the cost.”

Caleb glanced up at the coachman. The coachman looked back at him, giving a slight shrug. “I don’t mind, sir. You might as well listen to the young lady.”

Caleb couldn’t see any reason to complain. The more money he could save on this trip, the better. He quickly hefted his bags into the back of the cart before climbing up himself, taking a seat opposite Jester. “Thank you,” he muttered, and Jester grinned at him.

“Of course! Whereabouts in Alfield are you headed, by the way? If you’re close to me I could walk you there.”

“I am- the, ah, the Tealeaf house.”

The coachman gave a sudden, sharp, inhalation of breath. “You- pardon, sir?”

“I am going to the Tealeaf house,” Caleb repeated. “Or- the Fletching house? I am sorry, I am not sure which name it goes by-”

“I’m not taking you up to the house,” the driver interrupted firmly. “I’ll drop you off at the bottom of the hill, but I’m not going any further than that. Talk to Caduceus, the groundskeeper, if you really want to go up to the house proper.” He shook his head, muttering his next words under his breath. “More fool, you…”

Caleb frowned. “Alright,” he said uncertainly, looking over at Jester. Much to his surprise, Jester had paled too. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Why are you going to the Tealeaf house?” Jester hissed. She leaned forwards, clutching her skirts in her hands. “I really, _really_ hope this is a joke, Mr Widogast.”

“It is not a joke. I have been hired to go to the house and locate Lord Gustav’s last will and testament and see that it is carried out. That is all.” He glanced from Jester to the coachman and then back again, noticing the coachman’s tense posture as he poorly pretended not to be listening in on the conversation. “Is there a problem with that?”

“That house is _haunted_ ,” Jester whispered loudly. “Don’t you know that?”

“No? As I said – I am here on business.”

“You shouldn’t go up there,” the coachman interrupted loudly. “It’s bad luck. If I was you, sir, I’d stay overnight at the inn, and go back to wherever you came from in the morning.”

“I cannot- I have been hired to locate this will, _sir_. That is my job, and I intend to see it through. Besides, ghosts – the supernatural – surely you know that they are not real?”

There was a frigid silence.

“Just- don’t go up there, okay?” Jester muttered, sitting back against the rocking, swaying cart. “It’s not a happy place. Not everyone who goes there comes back.”

 _I doubt that_ , Caleb thought, but did not say. He had been to a few places like this in the past, small towns where the residents liked to drum up rumour and ghost stories to work more money out of travelling visitors. He understood why – everyone needed to make a living, after all – but he just wished that they didn’t do it to him. He wasn’t going to fall for any of it.

The rest of the journey to Alfield continued in the same uncomfortable, awkward silence. Jester and Horris shared their farewells by Jester’s house and then the coachman continued on, muttering under his breath as he took Caleb to the where the groundskeeper’s house nestled in at the base of the hill. He didn’t linger when he dropped Caleb off, waiting only for long enough for Caleb to take down his bags before turning the cart around and walking the horse on, quickly working up into a brisk trot as he vanished off back towards Alfield. Caleb didn’t bother to watch him go. He knew how people could be, especially in smaller villages where belief in the supernatural ran rampant. He took a moment to straighten his clothing and then approached the door of the small building at the base of the hill that the coachman had dropped him off at, raising a hand to knock on the old, oaken door. The sound of the heavy thuds seemed to ring out in the stillness and silence of the night, as though the trees themselves were listening.

It didn’t take long for someone to answer. Within a few seconds the door was being pulled open, revealing a tall, gaunt-looking firbolg standing on the other side, his pink hair cascading over one shoulder.

He blinked slowly. “Hey,” he said. “Can I help you?”

“Oh, _ja._ I am Caleb Widogast,” Caleb said, awkwardly tucking his briefcase under one arm so that he could hold out a hand to the groundskeeper. “I’m here to locate Lord Gustav’s will.”

There was a long, long moment in which the groundskeeper just stared at Caleb’s hand as though inspecting it. For what, Caleb wasn’t sure, but the sudden close scrutiny made the hair on the back of his neck prickle.

He swallowed. “I am-”

A large, faintly furred hand clasped around his own. “Caduceus Clay,” the firbolg rumbled, smiling gently as he shook Caleb’s unresisting hand. “Groundskeeper.”

“I- _ja_ , yes, I am aware.”

“You going to be heading up to the house?”

Caleb glanced up at the manor. It seemed to loom above them, parts of it peeking up above the oaks and elms as though watching them talk. For all that it was at least a ten minute walk away it seemed almost uncomfortably close, like Caleb could reach out and touch it if only he tried, and at the same time it seemed completely, entirely isolated, cut off not just from the village but from this plane of being itself. “I am, yes.”

Mr Clay nodded. “You’re going to be needing the keys then, I take it. Wait here – I’ll go get them and then give you a lift up. It’s better to take a cart, I find.”

“Thank you,” Caleb replied. It wasn’t a cold night, or a damp one, but he didn’t feel like lugging his bags and cat up a hill in the gathering darkness.

“No problem. You just sit tight – I’ll be back in a bit.”

The door shut. After a few minutes, there was the sound of distant, clopping hooves gradually drawing closer. Caleb turned to see the firbolg approaching, leading a horse who was already hitched to a small, two-wheeled cart, a single lantern swinging at one side of it. The light from the lantern was faint and dim, only barely glinting off the dampness that still coated the leaves and cobbles, but it was still there. Given what Caleb knew about country fog, and how easily you could become lost in it, he supposed it was necessary.

Mr Clay held out a hand, jingling a large ring of keys. “Here you go,” he said. “Don’t worry about paperwork or anything – only someone being paid to go up there would actually be willing to visit the house, and I know all the village folk.” He jingled the keys again. “These should give you access just about everywhere. Now, I don’t know which is for Lord Gustav’s study, or anything else like that, but the big silver one is for the front door.”

“Oh, thank you,” Caleb replied. He took the keys, tucking them quickly into the inside pocket of his coat, and then, with Mr Clay’s help, loaded his bags into the cart and climbed up himself, sitting beside the firbolg on the driver’s bench. Mr Clay clicked his tongue, gently urging the chestnut mare to walk on.

“Mr Clay,” Caleb said, as the cart rumbled its way up the drive. “The, ah… I met someone from the village on my way over here, and she seemed quite disturbed when I mentioned that I would be staying at the house. She seemed to believe that it was haunted…” He let the statement trail off, waiting to see the groundskeeper’s reaction. It was best, he had learned, not to upset anyone, and that didn’t just include the families of the deceased. By phrasing statements openly, carefully, he could avoid revealing his own thoughts and opinions before seeing their own.

Next to him, Mr Clay hummed. “Oh, yeah, people here do think that,” he acknowledged, his tone surprisingly light for the conversation at hand. “Some of them believe that Lord Gustav still lives here, but that’s a little bit hard to do when you’re dead. They think he never quite moved on from his son’s death and still wanders the halls, crying and searching for his lost child.” Mr Clay twitched the reins, calmly steering them around a bend in the road.

“I… I see…” Caleb muttered. It was unpleasantly easy to imagine the deceased lord roaming around the manor with the building itself so close by, the road approaching it ensnared with vines and brambles and overhung by ancient, groaning trees. He shivered, pulling his coat closer about himself. There would be no ghosts. He had been to many places, and there had never been any ghosts. “Do you believe that, Mr Clay?”

“Oh, nah, not at all.”

“Oh. Oh, that is-”

“It’s not Lord Gustav who still lives there. It’s his son.”

For a few moments, the only sound was the soft clopping of the horse’s hooves and the quiet, persistent rumbling and rattling of the cartwheels. Caleb swallowed, unable to stop himself from looking up at the house. It appeared intermittently between the trees; he’d catch sight of a wall, or a chimney, or the shine of growing moonlight off a window, and then it would disappear again, vanishing like smoke into the woodland. “You- is that what you think?”

“Of course,” Mr Clay replied easily. “I’ve been working here for many years, you know. I knew the young master – I knew both of them, in fact. Mollymauk always had a different presence to his brother. Now, I don’t set foot in the house – it’s not my job, and I’m happy just to tend to what parts of the garden the trees will let me – but I’ve seen him on occasion.”

“You have _seen_ him?”

“Sure. I catch a glimpse of him in the windows from time to time.”

Caleb glanced up at the house again. In the still, quiet night air, the trees whispered to one another beneath the gathering clouds. For a brief moment, the stirring of leaves and branches almost sounded like voices. “You- _ja_?” He didn’t mention how he didn’t believe in ghosts, how he had never believed in ghosts. Somehow, with the house so close and the night so quiet, that belief didn’t quite feel so firm.

“Mhmm,” Mr Clay hummed. “And hey, with that cat of yours you might even get to see him, too. Master Mollymauk always liked cats.” Mr Clay pulled the cart to a stop, just before a pair of large, wrought iron gates, rusted and wrapped around with crawling, clinging vines. They hung open, beckoning Caleb to continue along the overgrown driveway and up to the house itself. “Anyway, here we are. Now, I’ve got to get back, but I’ll be back tomorrow at around midday should you want to go down to the village.”

“Could I not walk back myself?” Caleb asked, disembarking and lifting down his bags. “It is not very far.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t recommend that.”

“Why not?”

“The house doesn’t get visitors very often. Safer to travel by cart, I’ve found. But anyway, you’ve got all the keys. If you see the young master, let me know tomorrow, would you?”

“I will- _ja_ ,” Caleb replied, feeling somewhat off-balance. Mr Clay nodded, seemingly satisfied with that answer.

“Good. You have a good night now, Mr Widogast.”

“You too, Mr Clay.”

Mr Clay muttered something to the horse, and Caleb politely stepped back to give the cart space to turn around. The firbolg lifted his hand in a wave which Caleb returned and then, with the gentle rumbling of cart wheels, he and the cart disappeared down the hill and into the gathering mist, leaving Caleb stranded and alone at the top of Tealeaf Hill.

The hair at the back of his neck prickling, Caleb turned. The house loomed above him, sombre and still against the dark night air. There were no lights flickering in any windows, no birds fluttering to and from their nests. There were no signs of life at all, in fact. There was just the house, silent and brooding.

Caleb swallowed, wiping his hands against his trousers. There was no reason to be afraid. There was no one in the house – he knew that for certain. It was spooky, yes, but abandoned properties always were. That was simply how it was.

“Come on,” he muttered to himself, forcing his legs to move. He reached down, picking up his bags and Frumpkin’s carry case, and approached the front door. The gravel crunched quietly beneath his feet, the sound only ceasing when he climbed the short flight of stone stairs that led up to the door. It didn’t take him long to locate the key that Caduceus mentioned, and with a groan of unoiled hinges the door opened beneath his hand, letting in a gust of air to stir the cobwebs that adorned the inside of the house.

It was dark inside the house, uncomfortably so. With the light of the waning moon, now rising behind him, Caleb could just about make out the shapes of furniture scattered around the entrance hall. Around one side of the room a broad, dark wooden staircase climbed upwards, leading onto an open landing above. Caleb could see the moonlight sparkling faintly off the chandelier that hung from the high ceiling above. Once upon a time, he was sure, this room would have been beautiful.

Not anymore.

He stepped inside, tugging the door shut behind him. It shut with a heavy _thud_ , like the sound of a sealing tomb, and Caleb took a moment simply to breathe before he stepped forwards, reaching out with blind, fumbling hands for the staircase. Thanks to his memory he knew exactly where it was, and soon his feet came into contact with the base of it. He dropped his bags, carefully setting down Frumpkin, and fished a box of matches from his pocket. It hadn’t taken him long to realise that, when executing wills for abandoned properties, matches were an absolute necessity.

In the darkness, the match flared like a beacon. Caleb lifted it to the candle sconce that he’d spotted beside the staircase, lighting the wick and filling the area around him with a soft, golden light. He wouldn’t have enough hands to carry everything upstairs in one go, but the light helped push back any lingering, foolish thoughts he’d been having about the possibility of ghosts. He would be alright making two trips.

And so he did.

It didn’t take Caleb long to locate a bedroom in the house. He wasn’t sure who he had once belonged to, but at this point it didn’t matter. The room was furnished, adorned with once-gaudy silks now long-faded by time and sunlight, with a cluster of peacock feathers sitting in a vase in one corner. The feathers were covered in dust, now, as was the furniture, but the bed was large and seemed free of bugs after a cursory inspection. Caleb set the candle he had taken down on the saucer on the bedside table, leaning down to let Frumpkin out of his case.

“There you go, _schatz_ ,” he muttered. “I am sorry I kept you cooped up so long.”

Frumpkin gave a short meow, stretching his legs before hopping up onto the bed and sniffing around. Caleb got changed as Frumpkin inspected the room, neatly folding his clothes and setting them down in a chair in the corner. He knew other people may find it strange, sleeping in a dead man’s bed, but Caleb didn’t mind. It was just a bed. For all he knew, this bed could have been for a guest, or for Lucien Tealeaf, who could very well still be alive. All that was strange about it was that it was a bit dusty. Beyond that, there was no other reason for him not to use it. If anything, it was probably better and more comfortable than any bed he would find in the village, and it had the added advantage of being free. 

Caleb looked over towards Frumpkin before approaching the bed. His cat seemed to be done investigating the room and was now sitting facing a corner, his ears pricked as though listening for something. Caleb settled down as best he could on the bed, tugging the blankets over him. They smelled of mothballs and dust, of age and time and the seeping, lingering decay that seemed to infect every inch of the house, but they were dry, and clean enough, and so they would have to do.

“Frumpkin,” he called softly. Frumpkin didn’t react. He just stayed sitting where he was, his back straight, his gaze entirely focused on one dark corner of the room as, behind him, the tip of his tail twitched ever so gently. Caleb waited patiently for a few moments, waiting for Frumpkin to respond in any way, but when the cat didn’t he sat upright in bed with a sigh. “ _Frumpkin_ ,” he called again, louder this time. “ _Hier bitte, schatz_.”

In the flickering light of the candle, the shadows in the corners of the room seemed to dance. Once again, Frumpkin completely ignored Caleb’s calls, continuing to stare into the shadows as though he could see something that Caleb could not – a mouse, perhaps, or some insect that had snuck out from beneath the crumbling plaster. Beyond the walls of the house the wind gave a soft, mournful cry, rattling the windows in their frames and pulling the branches of the trees over the glass, with a sound like the scraping of nails down a blackboard.

For reasons that Caleb couldn’t explain, he shivered.

And then, like with the breaking of some spell, Frumpkin shook himself and stood, turning to look at Caleb as though nothing had happened. He gave a short _mrrp?_ and approached the bed, quickly jumping up onto it and walking onto the pillow next to Caleb.

“Finally,” Caleb muttered. He reached out, running his fingers through Frumpkin’s short, ginger fur. “What had you so interested by that corner, huh? It better not have been a mouse.”

Frumpkin purred, butting his head up against Caleb’s. Caleb laughed quietly.

“ _Ja, ja_ , I know, I love you too. Now settle down and get some sleep, alright? We will have a lot of work to do in the morning.” He scratched Frumpkin briefly under the chin and lay back down, making himself as comfortable as he could on the musty bed. Frumpkin spent a few moments treading a little circle for himself and then eventually settled down too, claiming most of the pillow as he so often did. That was alright, though. Caleb was accustomed to that. He’d had Frumpkin for a fair few years now, and it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for him to wake in the middle of the night to find himself pushed halfway off the bed by a small, furry feline. On more than one occasion, he’d somehow ended up almost entirely on the floor.

He looked around the room, shifting a little to make himself more comfortable on the bed. Against the clouded, spiderweb-hung windows, the branches tapped out an erratic, staccato rhythm, occasionally interrupted by the scraping and screeches of wood on glass when the wind blew just so. Caleb couldn’t hear the calling of owls, couldn’t hear the cries of foxes – all he could hear was the branches, prying gently against the ancient stonework. All he could hear was the house groaning and creaking as it settled. He couldn’t hear any scratching. He couldn’t hear the familiar sound of rodents gnawing at the walls, or running beneath the floorboards.

Whatever Frumpkin had seen in the corner, it hadn’t been a mouse.

Caleb gave the room one last glance. It was dark and quiet, home now only to the insects that dwelled within the walls and in the spaces between the floorboards. He couldn’t hear them, but he could only assume that they were present – any house, especially one in this state, was likely to have them. There was a flicker of movement as a branch blew briefly into the sliver of moonlight that slipped into the room, casting long, spindly shadows against the door, but the moment was short-lived. Within seconds the room was still again. There was nothing else there. There was no one else there. There was just Frumpkin, and Caleb, and his dancing, flickering candle.

Caleb took a breath, feeling the stale air settle in his lungs, and then he leaned over and blew out the candle.

Save for the touch of the moonlight, the room turned as dark as tar. Caleb shut his eyes, lying down and tugging the blanket up higher, and slowly, gradually, felt sleep draw her mantle over him.

From the shadowed corners of the room, black as pitch where even the waning moonlight could not reach, something – some _one_ – watched Caleb slumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So after finishing up Twine, I thought I was done with Widomauk longfics. Apparently not, and thus I’m back with yet _another_ Widomauk fic, and, for the first time in the history of my longfic writing, this one _isn’t_ a modern AU! Shocking, I know! For the full Spooky™ effect, I recommend reading this while listening to the Woman In Black soundtrack. 
> 
> Also, it turns out that writing a mystery-romance fic requires significantly more planning than a purely romance fic, and for that reason, chapters will be going up every _week and a half_ , with the next chapter going up on **July 10th!**


	2. Chapter 2

There were no owls in the branches of the trees that tapped and scraped against Caleb’s bedroom window. There were no frogs croaking their night time chorus amongst the gathered loam and rotted leaves. No insects chirped; no foxes cried. All around the house, the forest was still, and dark, and silent, branches digging against the stonework as though begging to be let in. High overhead, amongst the thick, rain-heavy clouds, the moon painted the estate in silver and grey, shining white off the dusty glass of the windows.

In his bed, weighed down by the musty, time-faded blankets of a dead man, Caleb stirred in his sleep. Anyone watching could have seen his face creasing in a frown, his hands opening and closing uselessly around nothing as he shifted and rolled. Anyone watching could have seen him shiver, pressing down further amongst the blankets as the night wrapped him more closely and deeply in its silent, sea-dark embrace. Anyone watching could have seen the gentle stirring of the spiderwebs as a draft ghosted through the room.

Someone did.

Someone, drawn by curiosity and fear and confusion all at the same time, drifted from the shadows. Their form seemed to stretch and twist, elongating unnaturally as the darkness reluctantly gave up its grasp on them. They were not real, not quite – their body seemed to shift and wave like smoke, like oil, as though the slightest touch or a wrong look might cause it to disintegrate and scatter to dust, but all the same, just outside the watchful gaze of the moon, they settled into this mortal realm. Slowly, cautiously, they moved closer to the man on their bed, the dark shadow-stuff that formed them shifting and blurred as though behind clouded glass. Their limbs stretched uncomfortably, still connected to the darkness that dwelled in the corners of the room, but all the same they moved forwards, as slow as ice and as uncatchable as breath.

Beyond the window, the branches ceased their incessant, erratic tapping. The mist and fog swirling around the estate stilled for a moment, as though the whole world was holding its breath.

The being reached out and, just for a moment, rested the back of one hand against Caleb’s cheek.

Caleb dreamed.

He stopped shifting and stirring, his entire body falling lax the moment the being, the shadow-made-real, brushed against his face. For a moment he didn’t seem to breathe at all, his chest stilling beneath the blankets, but then the moment passed and he inhaled once again.

Behind the darkness of his closed lids, in that unreal, ethereal land of dreams, Caleb Widogast walked down a long, seemingly endless corridor. He held a candle in one hand, the flame flickering and twisting every which way despite the utter stillness of the air around him. There was no breeze here, no breath to disturb the mist that wound around his ankles and blurred his vision. Beneath his feet the floor was soft and carpeted, stretching out to meet the wallpapered walls that hemmed him in. They were familiar to him, at once unplaceable and immediately recognisable in that strange way that everything in dreams was familiar. _The Tealeaf manor_ , he thought to himself.

He took another step forward. The mist parted before him with a sigh, cupping the back of his neck and winding around his arms like the touch of a lover. It slipped over his chest, at once holding him back and beckoning him forwards, down this corridor of impossibly dark shadows and impossibly white mist where Caleb stood alone, an island of solitude in the unbreaking silence.

There was a flicker of movement, a shifting of motion at the corner of his eye. Caleb turned, the world swirling and breaking around him like fog before reforming into the exact same hallway, now free from the mist that had masked it before. The wooden rafters stretched up overhead, ornate and carved but too fuzzy for him to truly make out, and, to his right, he felt the opening, beckoning space that he knew was the entrance hall of the Tealeaf manor.

Just ahead of him, to his left, he could see a door, behind which he knew that he was sleeping. He couldn’t focus on the door, though. He couldn’t stop to consider what would happen if, in this dream – for it could be nothing else – he stepped forwards, and opened the door, and saw himself lying in bed, painted by moonlight.

He could not consider any of that, because, at the end of the hallway, there was a figure.

Even from this distance, Caleb could tell that they were a tiefling. They looked to be dressed as he was, in trousers and a shirt and waistcoat, but he could spy the tell-tale flickering of a tail sweeping around their shoes, could see the rising curves of horns that bracketed the figure’s head. Their back was to him, hands clasped neatly behind them as they looked at something that Caleb could not see.

To his own faint surprise, Caleb felt no fear. He felt nothing, actually, if he were entirely honest – no fear, no confusion, no alarm. He still held the candle in his hand, its shifting, unreal light the only illumination in the darkened hallway. It flickered and danced, briefly catching on the paintings that hung on the walls and stroking long lines of amber along the length of Caleb’s arm. Its light wasn’t bright enough to reach the figure, and yet, all the same, Caleb could see them as clear as anything, as though they were standing right before him.

Slowly, carefully, he took a step forward. The house seemed to welcome him, the floorboards silent beneath his feet in a way that they weren’t in his waking hours. Ahead of him, a pair of candles flickered to life, spreading warm light over the tiefling and catching on the jewellery that hung from their horns. The light danced across their back, shining gold off the buckle of their waistcoat and highlighting every relaxed, calm motion of their tail. Caleb took another step, and then another, his footsteps muffled by the thick carpet beneath his feet. The figures in the paintings – or what parts of them he could make out – seemed to watch him progress, staring down at him blandly as, inch by inch, he made his way closer to the figure.

And then, the figure turned and, for the first time in this dream, Caleb could truly see them clearly. They were a male tiefling, fine-featured and beautiful with red, pupil-less eyes and lavender skin. The waistcoat, Caleb could see now, was finely embroidered, a pattern of peacocks and feathers and all kinds of countless, indeterminate symbols stitched across it, the whole item sparkling with fine, detailed beading.

It was also, Caleb noticed, entirely stained with blood.

A large gash was cut through the middle of it, the kingfisher-blue fabric turned dark around the site of the injury. Even the tiefling’s shirt was marked, touched with red in places with fingerprints of blood.

Caleb swallowed, and moved closer. The tiefling didn’t seem to react to his presence, just staring straight on ahead, his back ramrod straight and his tail still shifting and swaying gently. The fine charms on his horns jingled quietly as a gust swept down the hallway, the wind moaning around the rafters and making the candle in Caleb’s hand flicker almost to extinction, and then, in the dancing light, Caleb spotted something else.

There, on the tiefling’s cheek, was the inked head of a peacock.

Caleb swallowed. “ _Mollymauk_?” he whispered.

The tiefling smiled, revealing a row of perfect, pearly-white teeth.

“ _Darling_ ,” he purred, reaching out to lay a hand on Caleb’s cheek, and then the blood leaking through his waistcoat and darkening his shirt started to spread and grow. It swept over skin and fabric alike, staining red and crimson everywhere it touched as though swallowing and consuming the bright, vibrant colours that had been there before. As Caleb watched it wound up the tiefling’s neck, turning his purple skin carmine and soaking his hair to the roots, filling the air with the stench of rust and death.

The tiefling never stopped smiling, even when the blood poured into his open, grinning mouth.

Caleb sat bolt upright in bed, his heart in his throat. He could hear his own harsh breathing, could hear the bedsprings of the ancient mattress creaking beneath him. Beside him there was a soft sound as Frumpkin stood and stretched, shifting this way and that on the pillow, but Caleb barely noticed it. Behind his eyes he could still see the tiefling, could still feel the warm touch of the tiefling’s hand against his cheek, hells-hot and burning.

Caleb lifted a trembling hand, pressing it to where the tiefling had touched him. With the sunlight now streaming through the window it was easier to remind himself that what he’d just seen had been nothing but a dream, brought on by the strangeness of the house and the actions and words of the village folk. There were no ghosts here. There was nothing in the house but himself, and Frumpkin, and the insects and rodents that lived behind the walls. _Just a dream_ he told himself. He shifted his hand, feeling something damp and sticky beneath his fingers. _It was just a dream_.

He took a breath, forcing his heart to settle. When he moved his hand away, his fingertips were coated in blood.

Beyond the windows, there was no sound of morning birdsong.

\---

Caleb very carefully didn’t panic as he cleaned himself up. He filled the basin in the bathroom with hands that didn’t tremble at all, letting the water flow for a few seconds until the murkiness washed itself away. He cleaned his face without looking in the mirror, dabbing it dry with a small flannel he’d brought with him. The touch of the fabric against his face was comforting in its familiarity, rough and just a little bit itchy, and when he finally lowered it there was no blood to be seen marring the fabric. There was no blood to be seen anywhere.

He looked up, turning his head from side to side as he inspected himself in the mirror. Now, in the daylight, it was strangely easy to convince himself that the blood had never been on his face at all, that it had been some sort of strange, lingering night terror, but he couldn’t forget the feel of it beneath his fingers. He couldn’t forget the way the scent of it had filled his nose, heavy and cloying and sharply metallic. The blood had been there. He knew it.

He just didn’t know how.

“Frumpkin,” he murmured to himself. In the mirror, his reflection stared back impassively. “Frumpkin must have caught me in his sleep. That is what happens when you sleep next to a cat.” Nevermind that it had never happened before. Nevermind that Frumpkin always slept curled up, his paws carefully tucked away beneath his body. Nevermind that, looking at his face now, Caleb couldn’t see a single scratch or mark. There was absolutely no indication that he’d been cut in anyway, but he must have been. He _must_ have been. What else could have happened? No one else lived in the house – he _knew_ that. Bryce had told him as much, and even if Mr Clay had some strange beliefs about the state of certain Tealeafs, he’d still seemed to mostly agree that the Lord of the manor was dead, his sons either likewise deceased or fled. The house had been locked up tight when he’d arrived, the floors thick with dust unmarked by any footsteps save his own. The blood on his face could only have come from Frumpkin. There was no other explanation.

Caleb drew in a long, deep breath, still watching himself in the mirror. The mirror itself was old and stained, the frame spotted by rust and the silver backing edging towards tarnish. Around him the house was still and silent, quiet and settled as if it was slumbering still. There was nothing to be afraid of here. There was nothing else that walked these rooms.

And then, from out in the hallway, Caleb heard a soft, repetitive creaking of floorboards. He froze, his knuckles turning white around the flannel in his hands as the creaking grew closer to the bathroom door and then passed it entirely, moving on towards the end of the corridor. He could feel his heart thundering in his chest, adrenaline flooding through him as the creaking quieted and then vanished altogether.

 _No ghosts_ , he reminded himself. He forced himself to move, turning sharply towards the bathroom door before he could talk himself out of it.

“ _Hallo_?” he called out, immediately cursing himself from even thinking that he would get a response. He opened the bathroom door sharply, not letting himself delay, and looked out into the hallway in time to see the tip of Frumpkin’s tail go vanishing around a corner. _Ah_. That explained the noise. Frumpkin was off chasing a mouse, most likely. That was fine with Caleb – he trusted Frumpkin to return to him, and it was good to have him off exploring the house, scaring off any vermin that may have made a home there.

Caleb stepped out of the bathroom, folding the flannel between his hands. Beneath his feet the floorboards groaned again, his weight disturbing the ancient timber as his footfalls sent up small plumes of dust. It settled in silence, the hallway quieting until there was once again no sound but Caleb’s own breathing and that of the carpet stirring and shifting beneath his bare feet. He glanced down the corridor, seeing nothing but Frumpkin’s small, neat pawprints, and was about to return to his room to dress when he spotted something else.

In the dust that lay before him, a single line of footprints made their way to the end of the hallway and then turned the corner. With his perfect memory, Caleb knew that they had not been there before.

\---

Caleb could hardly wait for Mr Clay to arrive. He occupied himself as best he could with work, exploring the house in an attempt to determine where the will could plausibly be located. Most of the doors in the house opened to him beneath the keys that Mr Clay had provided, though a couple didn’t, either due to lost keys or to the hinges being rusted shut. Caleb didn’t try to disturb those rooms. He felt jittery, uncertain and off-balance for all that the sun streamed bright and joyous through the dust-laden windows. It was a bright, clear day, and Caleb had been quick to set a few fires burning in the grates, warming the house pleasantly. The fires helped, he found. Between them, and Frumpkin, and his own footsteps crossing back and forth in the dust until there was hardly a passageway unmarked, the house started to feel lived-in again. He found bedrooms, and the house’s long-empty kitchen, and a number of sitting rooms that he could only assume had, at some point, been used to entertain or host small parties or meetings. Even with the passage of years and the decay that had set in, the furnishings of the house were opulent, so lavish as to be skirting the line with gaudiness. If Caleb was honest, they almost put him in mind of a circus or carnival – beneath the gathered dust the chairs were upholstered in bright, colourful fabrics. Gilt frames clung to paintings; extravagant, elaborate carvings ran through the rafters and beams. The bones of the house were still simple – the staircase that curved up the side of the grand entrance hall was a solid, oaken affair – but Caleb could easily picture them having been dressed up with decorations no matter the season.

The house was pleasant – that much was undeniable – but as the minutes ticked by towards midday, Caleb never stopped feeling uncomfortable. He gathered papers without looking at them, depositing them on the large dining room table, and caught himself constantly looking at the grandfather clock that sat beneath the stairs. He’d wound it earlier in the day, synchronising it with his pocketwatch, but the soft ticking of the hands didn’t do anything to alleviate his tenseness. If anything, it only served to emphasise the absolute emptiness and silence of the house.

At 11:50, Caleb donned his jacket and coat, and picked up his briefcase. He knew that Mr Clay said he wouldn’t be at the house until midday, but he couldn’t stand waiting in the house for a moment longer. He scratched Frumpkin behind the ears, telling him to have fun chasing mice while he was gone, and then he left, the door giving a heavy _thud_ as it shut behind him. Somehow, it was easier waiting outside in the sunlight, and by the time Caleb saw the cart approaching and went to board it, he almost felt at ease again.

Almost.

He couldn’t shake the image of the footsteps in the dust from his mind. As the coach set off, swaying and rocking down the drive, Caleb turned the image of them over and over in his mind’s eye. They could have been his own footsteps, had they been a slightly different size. They could have been his own footsteps, had he walked the length of the corridor. They could have been his own footsteps, but they weren’t. He was certain of that.

Which meant that they must have been someone else’s.

“Mr Clay?” Caleb asked.

“Mm?”

“Did you… did you go up to the house at any point earlier today? Or last night?”

Mr Clay shook his head, his ears flapping slightly as he did so. “Nah, I only just came up now to pick you up. Besides, I don’t enter the house. My job is to tend to whatever bits of the garden need and want tending to, and I’m happy with that. And, please, do call me Caduceus, Mr Widogast. If I’m going to be seeing you a lot we might as well get friendly.”

Caleb frowned to himself, not even commenting on the last part. He didn’t doubt Mr Clay’s – Caduceus’ – statement that he hadn’t entered the house. He was quite certain that he now had the only keyring for the manor, and the groundskeeper didn’t strike him as the type of person to go where he wasn’t supposed to, but he undeniably would have preferred it if the groundskeeper _had_ entered the house. He knew how to deal with people, more or less.

He didn’t know how to deal with mysteriously appearing footprints.

Caleb shook his head slightly, pushing the thought of the footprints from his mind as best he could. Business. He was here on business. He might as well gather what information he could from the groundskeeper.

Caleb cleared his throat. “Mr Clay?”

“Caduceus, please.”

“…Caduceus.”

“Yeah?”

“As groundskeeper, you must have known the family well.”

Caduceus gave a quiet chuckle. “Ah, well, not really. They were always inside while I was outside, you see. Never saw much of the old lord, or of master Lucien – not until after Mollymauk’s death, at least – but I spoke with master Mollymauk on occasion.”

“What was he like?”

“Who? Lucien or Mollymauk?”

“Both.”

“They were as different as summer and winter, really. Master Lucien was a pretty quiet fellow. He was… he was more of a thinker and a watcher than a doer. Didn’t exactly put the village folk in a kindly mind towards him, seeing how he looked all fancy and rarely spoke to them. Made them think he was all stuck-up and haughty, too good for the likes of us. His twin, though, Mollymauk… he was always real friendly,” Caduceus continued. “Fond of – what do you call them… - pet names. Liked to call people d-”

“Darling,” Caleb muttered unthinkingly, remembering the single word he’d heard in his dream.

Caduceus looked over at him, frowning just slightly. “Yeah,” he said. “That. He was really fond of calling people ‘darling’. How’d you know that, Mr Widogast?”

Caleb shifted uncomfortably in his seat, turning his gaze towards the bony trees that lined the drive, and gave a short shrug. “Just a thought,” he mumbled. “I must have- I must have read it somewhere.” He made no mention of his dream. He made no mention of the blood that had coated the tiefling’s skin.

“Huh,” Caduceus replied. He didn’t sound particularly convinced by Caleb’s answer, but he didn’t seem bothered by it, either. “Well, alright then.”

There was a pause. For a while, the only sound was the wind whistling through the branches and the rumbling of the cart’s wheels over the road. It was so, so quiet. Even here, with another living being beside him, Caleb still felt that lingering discomfort that the house seemed to exude. He could understand, now, why no one from the village particularly felt like visiting the house.

“Did you see master Tealeaf?” Caduceus asked unexpectedly. Caleb jumped a little, snapped out of his daze, and then shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned back in the rocking, swaying seat of the cart.

“ _Nein_ ,” he murmured. “I did- no, I did not see anyone. There was no one else at the house, Mr Clay- Caduceus. There was just myself and my cat.”

“Oh, nah, I didn’t mean like that. You won’t see master Tealeaf walking about like you and I, you know. He’s passed on, after all-”

“He is dead.”

“-yeah, sure he is, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still hang about. Sometimes, things that should be dead aren’t entirely, or there’s something keeping them here, and so they don’t move on to where they should. But,” Caduceus continued, in the same calm, level tone as teacher explaining basic arithmetic for the third time, “they can’t stick around with us, so they end up sort of… in between.”

“…In between? In between what?”

Caduceus shrugged, a graceful rolling motion of his shoulders. “Here and there,” he answered vaguely. “They can’t stay here, but they can’t move on there, so they sort of… drift. I’m going to assume that it’s deeply unpleasant, which is probably why so many of them get upset or angry. But, either way, you won’t see them here, and you won’t see them there. You’ll see them in the in between spaces; shadows, mirrors, the corner of your eye, places like that.”

Caleb swallowed. “What about dreams?” he asked, his voice little more than a whisper.

“You’ll see them there, too,” Caduceus replied. He twitched the reins, turning them onto the road leading into Alfield. “Dreams are a good space for them to linger. No walls present in dreams. Now, Mr Caleb, might I offer you a lift to town? It’s not very far on foot, but I’ve already got the cart out and you’re already sitting on it.”

Caleb eyed the road ahead of them. He hadn’t seen it very clearly the previous night, what with the overcast sky and the lack of any light to line it, but now, in the day, it looked almost welcoming. There was no walking track that he could see but the road itself was cobbled in the same manner as the road to the Tealeaf house, up until it faded out into a muddy, scruffy country track. He could walk into town. It could, in fact, be quite nice to walk into town – the longer he spent outside the house the more distant the dream felt, until he could almost convince himself that he hadn’t had it at all. A good, long walk in the fresh air would likely do him good, giving him the chance to stretch his legs and calm his mind.

Caleb turned slightly, looking up at the hill that rose up beside them. He couldn’t see the house, not at this angle, but he could feel its presence weighing down on the countryside, distorting it like a magnetic field.

“Yes,” he heard himself saying. “Yes, Mr Clay, you may.”

He wanted to get away from the house, he realised. Even if just for a moment, just for a few hours, he wanted to get away from the house. He wanted to get away from the house, and from the peeling wallpaper, and from the dust and the decay and the absolute, unbroken silence. It was so, so quiet up at the house. He hadn’t noticed it, not immediately, but as the time passed he came to realise that the only sounds he heard were the trees outside and his own footsteps. He assumed it was due to the thickness of the walls keeping out all other sound – what else could it be, after all? – but it was still unnerving. It made him feel isolated, alone and secluded on the island that was the hill.

“Yes,” he said again, his voice a mumble. He turned around in his seat, hunching down into his coat and grasping the handle of the briefcase tighter. “I would- I would like that very much, _bitte_.”

“Alright, then.” Caduceus twitched the reins, clicking his tongue, and the horse walked on. “I’ll be taking the cart back to my house once I’m done dropping you off, so you’ll have to find your own way back, but I’ll be happy to give you a ride back up to the house. I’m not sure you’ll make it up on your own, otherwise.”

That… that wasn’t quite what Caduceus had said the previous day, but it still gave Caleb pause. He frowned to himself a little, chewing his lower lip between his teeth for a moment. “… Mr Clay- Caduceus?”

“Mm?”

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

“Oh, you know,” Caduceus said casually. “The mist and trees don’t really like letting people through. Tend to turn people around, get them lost. Most people come back. Some don’t. Stuff like that.”

“I thought it was a direct path, though,” Caleb replied, frowning further. The path had certainly wound back and forth, switchbacking up the hill with a fair number of twists and turns to it, but he hadn’t seen any other entrances or exits. Even in the dark, amongst the fog, it looked like if one simply followed it up the hill they would eventually arrive at the house.

Next to him, Caduceus nodded. “It is,” he agreed. “It’s really nice to drive on, too. Good cobbles, nice and smooth. It can get a bit slippery in winter with the ice and all, but the family used to put down salt. Besides, in winter I used to just walk up.”

“How do people get lost on a direct path?”

“They don’t.”

“But you just said-”

“The mist loses them. Twists the world up, makes it so that they’re walking back the way they came.”

“How could you possibly know this?”

“People talk,” Caduceus said simply. “And not just people. The trees like to talk, too. You hear them whispering a lot. They don’t want to be doing what they’re doing.”

It wasn’t a particularly cold day, but despite himself Caleb shivered. He couldn’t stop himself from looking back at the house as the cart trundled on, catching glimpses of it through the trees that crowned the hill. It looked just how it had the day before, empty and abandoned and lifeless, with the windows staring out over the lands around like hollow, sunken eyes. The weak, overcast sunlight glinted faintly off the glass panes, bringing some degree of warmth to the red and grey brick of the house, but Caleb still couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was being watched.

The cart rounded a corner, the wheels rolling and rumbling over the dips in the road. Caleb swayed in his seat, his shoulder nudging against Caduceus’. For a moment, no longer than the pause between breaths, he thought he saw a glimpse of purple in one of the windows of the house. Even from here, he knew which window it was.

It was the window of the bedroom where he’d gone to sleep the previous night.

Caleb swallowed. “Uh… Mr Clay?”

The firbolg hummed, not bothering to look over at him. “Yeah?”

“The, ah… is it just you who believes- who has seen…”

“…Is it just me who’s seen master Tealeaf?” Caduceus finished for him. He glanced over, his ears twitching slightly. “That’s a funny question coming from you, Mr Widogast. I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.”

“I don’t.”

“Uh huh. Well, if you really want to know… no, I don’t think it’s just me.” Caduceus returned his attention to the road, ducking slightly as the cart passed under some low-hanging branches. What leaves remained on them rustled as he brushed them aside, murmuring and whispering quietly amongst the soft, background music of birdsong.

“I thought you said that no one in the village ever approaches the house,” Caleb replied, frowning. “Yesterday, when you dropped me off, you said that only someone being paid to would be willing to visit the house.”

“Yeah, I did say that.”

“So who else could have seen- could have seen master Tealeaf? Is he seen in the village?”

“Oh, nah, not really,” Caduceus replied easily, “but you don’t have to be in the house to see him. Sometime he wanders, but that’s very rare. I think it must be hard for him. Something’s keeping him there, you know.”

“What is?”

“I don’t know.”

Caleb didn’t have a response for that. He didn’t have a response for a lot of what Caduceus had just said. He sat in silence for the rest of the ride, drumming his fingers anxiously against the handle of his briefcase. None of this, none of what Mr Clay had said, made any sense, and yet in some strange way it did, and Caleb hated that. He liked knowing things, liked understanding things, but he didn’t understand any of this. He didn’t understand people that were neither alive nor dead, and he didn’t understand mist that would turn you around on a direct path, and he didn’t understand the fears of the villagers, or the calmness of Caduceus. Everything was strange, and unusual, and the sooner he got this job done, the better.

The sooner he returned to his normal, rational life, where ghosts didn’t exist and where the blood on his face had come from his cat catching him on a claw in his sleep, the better.

Eventually, they arrived by the borders of the village. It slowly came into view before them – a collection of cottages, most of them thatched, all connected by twisting, winding lanes. It was rather picturesque, and Caleb could easily envision it being almost beautiful in spring and summer, when all the flowers came into bloom and the place was soaked in golden sunlight.

Caduceus dropped him off just inside the village, drawing the cart up just outside a small tea shop that he assured Caleb that he would like. Caleb hadn’t mentioned anything about tea the whole ride down, but he could feel the lingering exhaustion of the nightmare lining the marrow of his bones. He’d brought no tea with him, foolishly having assumed that he would be able to collect some on his way, and he felt that, right now, a cup of tea would be the perfect thing to start off his day of trawling through the records of the town.

He pushed open the door, hearing the little bell tinkling above him. It was a small shop, scarcely but comfortably furnished, with a handful of patrons dotted about, including one that Caleb recognised. Sitting at a table, opposite a dark-skinned woman in a waistcoat and jacket with hair that was shaved along the sides, was the same blue tiefling that he had caught a cart from the station with the previous evening. _Jester_.

Caleb raised a hand, giving a short wave of recognition to Jester as he walked to an empty table. Jester’s eyes went wide, a large smile crossing her face as she waved a hand and enthusiastically waved back.

“Mr Widogast!” she called. “Hi!”

“Ah, _hallo_ ,” Caleb replied, not expecting her to be so vocal.

“What are you doing in town?” Jester asked. “I thought you were up at the house!”

For a moment, Caleb thought he saw a flash of confusion and anger cross her companion’s face. He glanced over at her but the woman didn’t look at him, instead glaring down at the table before her. _Odd_. “I, um, I was up at the house,” he explained, “but I- I needed to locate the records office here, just to see what I could find. You know, things like deeds of ownership, previous house owners to contact in case they are interested in rebuying the house, death records. Those sorts of things.”

Jester gave a knowing nod. “Oh, yes, I completely understand,” she said, her tone much to breezy and lofty to be entirely genuine. Her companion snorted, but Jester didn’t look at her.

Caleb raised an eyebrow. “Do you? I don’t suppose you could point me in the direction of the records office?”

“Of course!” Jester chirped. She lifted a hand, pointing off down the road, but the moment she went to speak her companion interrupted her. “It’s-”

“It’s that way,” Jester’s companion said flatly, pointing in a different direction to Jester. “Down the road, left at the Uk’otoa’s Eye pub, past Old Bumpy – that’s a really knobbly tree, by the way – and then it’s on the other side of the market. Big fuckin’ pillars out front. Can’t miss it.”

“Oh!” Caleb said, blinking slightly in surprise. “Oh, uh, thank you, miss…?”

The woman raised her head, chin jutting out as she stared at him with narrowed eyes, but didn’t reply. After a few moments of lingering, awful silence, Caleb broke eye contact, looking away. He wasn’t particularly fantastic with eye contact at the best of times. He _especially_ wasn’t good with eye contact when he was being definitely glared at, as though he committed some unspeakably offensive thing. It seemed no name would be forthcoming from the woman, but he supposed that it wasn’t really necessary. He doubted he would need to talk to this woman again.

“So…” Jester said, when the silence had stretched on for an uncomfortably long time. “Did you stay at the house last night, Mr Widogast?”

“Oh! _Ja_ , _ja_ , I did,” Caleb said, grateful for the new topic of conversation. Jester pulled a slight face, her expression part way between concerned and an expression that Caleb couldn’t place. It was frustration, almost, but not quite.

“Huh,” Jester said quietly. “And did you- how was it? Was the house- did you see- how was it?”

“It was alright,” Caleb replied guardedly, choosing not to mention his dream, or the footsteps, or the strange, uncomfortable conversation he’d had with Caduceus. Those things, all of them… they weren’t for this world. They weren’t for the structured, rational world that he knew and existed in, and he certainly didn’t want to provide the village with more fodder for their ridiculous delusion that the house was haunted. That wouldn’t help matters. That wouldn’t help matters in the slightest. “I slept well.”

Once again, Jester paused before replying. “Alright,” she said, her tone just barely suspicious. “Anyway, enjoy your tea, Mr Widogast. The royal grey is especially good. And- good luck at the house, alright? Stay safe there.”

“I will try my best.”

For a moment Jester hesitated, almost as if she was going to speak again, but then she shook her head. Caleb took that as his indication to leave – he walked past the table that Jester was sharing with her friend, quickly finding one of his own in a corner of the shop. He could hear Jester and her companion whispering back and forth the moment he was past the table, but above the faint background noise of the shop, he couldn’t make out anything they were saying. He quickly ordered his tea – and a box of loose leaf to take back to the house with him – and passed the time waiting for it to arrive going back over a select few documents he’d taken from the house. He was no closer yet to locating the will, but he was hoping that, in some of the letters he’d found tucked away, he might be able to identify or establish some other family member – a sibling, a parent, even a distant friend of Lord Gustav’s who Caleb could reach out to.

The tea, when it arrived, was indeed just as good as Jester had promised it was. Caleb sipped at it absently as he read, barely even noticing how, across the shop from him, the voices of both Jester and her companion had risen. It was only when clear, distinct words started to become apparent that Caleb looked up, wondering if he could perhaps ask them to quieten down.

“No, don’t!” Jester was saying. “I have already told him that he shouldn’t be at the house!”

Oh, gods. Another one of these warnings. Caleb sighed, tugging off his reading glasses as he looked up at the approaching woman. “Are you here to also tell me that the house is haunted?” he asked tiredly. “I have already been told that by several people, but unfortunately I have a job to do.”

“Oh, I’m not here to tell you any of that bullshit,” the woman replied, waving a hand, but whatever quiet delight Caleb felt at encountering someone else who didn’t believe in any of the ghost nonsense quickly faded at her next words. “I’m actually just here to tell you to piss off.”

Caleb blinked. “…Pardon?”

“I am here,” the woman repeated, enunciating her words slowly and clearly, “to tell you to _piss off_.”

Behind her Jester gave a small sigh, shooting Caleb an apologetic look. “Sorry,” she whispered to him, before turning her attention back to her friends. “Beau, come on, just drop it, okay?”

“I’m not dropping this,” Beau hissed back. “I know what I’m fucking doing, Jessie.”

“I know that you used to work for them, but-”

“ _Listen_ ,” Beau said louder, ignoring Jester entirely now as she approached Caleb’s table. Caleb scooted his chair back, suddenly wishing he hadn’t picked a table in the corner. “Whoever the fuck you are,” Beau spat, “you go back up to that house, and you pack up your shit, and you _leave,_ alright? You go back to Rexxentrum, and you tell Bryce to _stop fucking sending people_ , you hear me?”

“Beau-” Jester said quietly, her voice halfway between concerned and warning, but Beau ignored her and continued on.

“You leave the house alone,” she said. “You leave it alone, and you leave Gustav alone, and you leave Molly alone, okay? Tell Bryce that- that you’ve found the will, and that we’ve found Lucien, or that Lucien’s dead, or anything like that.” She fumbled in her pocket, digging out a purse and slamming down a handful of coins. They clattered on the table, rolling in every direction and falling to the ground with the soft tinkling of metal on stone. “See this? I’ll _pay_ you and everything, if you just sit quiet for a few days back in Rexxentrum, and then tell one little lie and say that the will’s all been sorted out, and that the house is sorted and that everything here is _fine_ , and that Bryce doesn’t need to send anyone else because it’s all been taken care of. You just _leave the house alone_ , okay? You leave it the fuck alone.”

“ _Beauregard_ ,” Jester said again, louder this time. Beau spun in place, flinging an arm out to point a furious hand back at Caleb,

“He’s not _his_ , Jester!” Beau exclaimed, venom and fury dripping from every shaking syllable. “This is just- this is just some fancy fuck who doesn’t even give a shit about Molly! He’s going to go rooting through everything and then as soon as he’s found what he’s looking for he’s going to sell the house, and then some new fuckers will move in and I will _never_ find out what happened to my best friend!”

“I need to do my _job_ ,” Caleb interrupted. “I am very sorry if that disrupts your plans, truly I am, but it is what I have been hired to do. I should only be here for a short while, and I assure you, I will be as careful as I can.” Careful with what, he wasn’t exactly sure, but it felt like the right thing to say. As long as it diffused the situation somewhat, it would be the right thing to say.

But, apparently, it wasn’t the right thing to say. Beauregard snorted, whirling around to glare at Caleb again. “We both know that ghosts aren’t real,” she said, certainty hanging heavy on every word, “but I fucking am, and I will not hesitate to punch you right in your smug _fucking_ face if you’re not gone in the next couple of days.”

“I will be gone once the job is done,” Caleb replied, feeling dislike and anger starting to rise within him. He didn’t know who this woman was, or how she knew Bryce, but he knew that he had a job to do, and he was going to do it. He could handle grieving family, and all the strange ways that grief made itself known. He could handle this woman, too. “Whenever that may be. Maybe a few days, maybe a week, I do not know, but I have a job to do.”

“Yeah? And what job is that, exactly, Mr Widogast?”

“You have already described it! I will locate Lord Gustav’s will, ensure that the house is in order, and execute the will as best I can. I am here to do my job, and I intend to do it,” Caleb hissed, trying not to let his ire get the best of him. “That is all. I will do my job, and then I will leave, and we will never have to see each other again.”

Beauregard laughed. It was a horrible, hollow sound, utterly devoid of joy. “Oh, will you now?” she asked.

“ _Ja_.”

“Beau,” Jester called out again. She took a step forwards, reaching out to place a hand on Beauregard’s shoulder. “Beau, come on. You know this is pointless.”

“It _isn’t_ -”

“It _is_ ,” Jester insisted softly, staring up at Beau. Beau didn’t look back at her, her gaze still fixed on Caleb. “Beau, come on. You have to let this go at some point. I can speak to Molly if you want-”

“He’s fucking _dead_ , Jessie-”

“I know, but I can still try! I’ve been practising my seances, you know!”

Beau sighed, finally turning to look at Jester. Her shoulders seem to fall slightly, losing some of the tension that they had been holding. “Just- don’t,” she muttered. “You know none of that bullcrap is real.”

“It _is_.”

“Sure. I’m gonna go home.” Beauregard took a step forwards, slipping out from under Jester’s hand, but just before she left the little café she turned, pointing a hand back at Caleb. “I don’t want you here,” she said flatly, “but I can’t force you to leave, apparently, so I’m just gonna say this; do your job, and then fuck off, alright? That’s it. Get it done and then _leave_. Leave us alone.” She paused, drawing in a breath. “Leave Molly alone.” For just a moment longer than was comfortable Beauregard maintained eye contact, her eyes sharp and steely as they stared through Caleb. Caleb didn’t say anything, not wanting to inadvertently anger her again, but after a moment he nodded. Beau nodded back and then, with a quiet tinkle of the bell, she left the tea shop. Jester shot Caleb an apologetic glance, mumbling an apology under her breath, and then followed after her, leaving him almost alone in the shop.

Caleb swallowed, trying not to make eye contact with the handful of other patrons as he hastily downed his tea and picked up his briefcase. There was no point in staying here – local village folk might not exactly be the same as a grieving family, but he didn’t want to anger or upset them all the same. For all he knew, they could know something potentially extremely useful about the situation at the house.

He made his way to the records office, following Beauregard’s instructions to the letter, and spent the remainder of the afternoon gently persuading a stubborn clerk to allow him access to the files that the clerk barely even admitted they had. Caleb knew by now that, for whatever reason, seemingly no one in the village wanted him investigating the house or even stepping foot in it, but he still wished that they would listen to _reason_. The sooner they helped him locate what he needed, the sooner he could be done with the job, and the sooner he could leave.

But they didn’t want to help him. The clerk barely even wanted to talk to him, and by the time he’d finally gathered and reviewed the scant documents presented, requesting copies of some he might need to send back to the office and signing acquisition papers for those he would need to keep, it was very nearly evening.

Caleb didn’t bother to try to find a lift back to the base of Tealeaf Hill. The day wasn’t a warm one but it wasn’t freezing either, and with no rain on the horizon the walk back to the base of the hill was pleasant enough, giving him plenty of time to be alone with his thoughts. All day long, he hadn’t been able to shake Beauregard’s words, or her fury, from his mind. He understood that some people in town would have connections to the house – that much was unavoidable – but from what he’d gathered from Caduceus, and from Jester and the coach driver the day before, he’d assumed that those connections would have faded somewhat in the wake of Lord Gustav’s death and the house’s consequent abandonment.

Apparently not.

Apparently, some people in town didn’t believe in ghosts, just like him, but felt strongly about the house all the same.

Caleb asked no questions of Caduceus as he accepted his offer of a lift back up to the top of the hill in the gathering evening, instead sitting in the cart in silence, watching the trees and soft, persistent mist roll by. How could people get lost on this road? How could the trees not want to be doing what they were doing? How could Caleb wake up with blood on his face, and how could there be another person’s footprints in the dust of the hallway, and how could he no longer find his absolute, resolute disbelief in the supernatural?

How, now, was he almost dreading returning to what he _knew_ was an abandoned manor, empty of all life save for his cat?

The cart rolled to a stop just before the gate, the wheels rumbling and clattering over the smooth flint cobbles. Caleb disembarked almost reluctantly, barely having the presence of mind to remember to thank Caduceus. If the firbolg noticed his absent-minded state, he didn’t say anything – he just wished Caleb a good night and then slowly started the process of turning the cart without actually crossing through the gates of the manor, promising to be back the next day at the same time or earlier to do some gardening.

Caleb hardly heard his words. His attention was fixed almost entirely on the house before him, eyes searching every window for a hint of purple, a flash of movement, _anything_. With the darkness gathering in he couldn’t forget Jester’s words the day before, Beau’s words that afternoon, the blood he had found on his cheek or the footprints in the hallway. He couldn’t forget the mist or the whispering trees.

He couldn’t forget his dream.

Slowly, cautiously, he approached the house, half-expecting to, at any second, see a tall, purple-skinned tiefling standing in a window, but he saw nothing. The house was as still and silent as ever, the door creaking just how it had the previous day when Caleb pushed it open. The fires he had lit earlier had been extinguished before he left and the house was chilly now, just a few degrees warmer than the air outside, and the soft tick-tocking of the grandfather clock somehow only made the house feel bigger. Caleb could hear it echoing along the corridors, the sound bouncing between the walls before being swallowed by the clustered shadows and thick, deep carpet.

In the quiet of the house, his footsteps as he crossed the hall rang like a death knell.

Upstairs, he found Frumpkin already sitting and grooming himself on the bed. He laid down his briefcase on the small desk in the room and discarded his coat and jacket, laying them over the back of a chair before picking up a candlestick from the bedside table. It wasn’t particularly late, not really, but the sooner he could sleep the sooner tomorrow’s sun would come, and so Caleb took a deep breath, steadying his quickening heart, and stepped out into the hallway.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting. He wasn’t sure he _was_ expecting anything, but he couldn’t help the way his heart picked up as the ticking of the clock started to ring out louder. He couldn’t help the way his gaze immediately darted to the end of the hallway, where the tiefling had been in his dreams.

But there was no movement. There was no motion. There was no one but himself, standing alone in the dark hallway. Caleb took a breath, tasting the dust on his tongue, and took a step forward. A breeze, let in by some imperfectly sealed window, whistled down the hallway, making the light of his candle flicker. Behind him, he heard a soft _creak_ as the bedroom door swayed gently in the draft.

 _No one is here_ , he reminded himself. _No one is here, Caleb_.

The wind whistled again, moaning against the outside of the house. And then, at the end of the corridor that lay before him, where the moonlight slipped through cracks in the heavy curtains to paint the carpet in silver, Caleb saw the lit candles start flickering out one after another.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beautiful art in this chapter was done by [Heidi](https://twitter.com/heidzdraws) and [Killian](https://twitter.com/Killianbillion)!
> 
> The next chapter will be posted on **July 22nd!**


	3. Chapter 3

The darkness approached like a wave, swallowing light and sound alike as, noiselessly, it swept along the hallway. It was soundless, silent, not whispering and murmuring as the wind did, but instead extinguishing each candle one after the other as though snuffing them from existence, plunging patches of the hallway into a blackness as thick and as dark as oil. As Caleb watched, the shadows seemed to stretch, pooling at the base of the walls and swarming to fill the voids left by each newly extinguished candle, wrapping around the ornate sconces until the only light that touched them was the single breath of fire left between Caleb’s hands. The curtains shivered slightly as the darkness passed them, flickering as though caught by the wind, but there was no wind here. There was no breeze, no draft. There was just the darkness, coiling slow and sinuous around Caleb’s ankles.

Caleb turned, following the progress of the darkness as it flowed around him. It leapt from light source to light source, chasing down the hallway as though pursuing some unseen enemy. The single flame of his candle flickered and danced wildly as the darkness passed over him but remained alight – a single point of light in the suddenly pitch-black hallway.

No matter how much Caleb strained his eyes, he could make nothing out beyond his bubble of light. Unlike in his dream – and, Gods, but this was so, so similar to his dream – there was no fog to catch the light, no mist to turn soft and white and nearly glowing with illumination. There was no contrast, no breeze whispering against his neck and stroking along his arms. There was only himself, and his candle, and the absolute, pure darkness that surrounded him.

This time, there was no figure at the end of the hallway either. This time, there was no Mollymauk Tealeaf. Caleb didn’t know whether to be relieved by that or not – as awful as it had been to watch the blood spread across Mollymauk’s skin, as terrible as it had been to see the gash that cut through the bright fabric of his waistcoat, at least he was, even in death, another person. At least, if he were here, in spirit or in imagination or in any form at all, Caleb would not be alone.

But there was no Mollymauk, and he _was_ alone. Almost distantly he heard his bedroom door slamming shut, trapping Frumpkin within it, but the noise was soft and muted as though muffled by the velvet darkness, and it faded quickly. Soon there was no sound but Caleb’s own short, panicked breathing, no light but that which he held. There was _nothing,_ nothing at all. The darkness was deep and absolute, taking and consuming Caleb’s own noises as though feasting on them, stopping any from reaching the outside world where- where what? Where there would be no one around to hear them? Where the nearest living thing outside of his cat was the strange, unusual groundskeeper who dwelt at the base of the hill? Whatever this was, whatever Caleb was experiencing, he was bound to experience it alone, and isolated, and afraid.

He swallowed, wetting his dry throat, but when he went to speak the words died in his throat, cutting themselves off as though the darkness was choking them out of him. He tried again, forcing air from his lungs, but once again he remained wordless, soundless, speechless. This was not like his dream. This was not like his dream where, despite the darkness, despite the mist, he felt very nearly at peace. This was not like his dream where he could hear, and speak, and see.

This was not his dream, and it was not quite reality, and behind the layers of his waistcoat and shirt, Caleb felt his heart drumming faster and faster as his nerves coated themselves in ice.

It took a long, long time for Caleb to work up the courage to move. The house was as still and as quiet as a tomb around him, soundless and breathless as though slumbering. He shifted quietly, cautiously, but there was no reaction. The floorboards did not creak beneath his weight; the house did not suddenly stir to meet him. Still cautious, but slightly less afraid, he took a step backwards, and then another, never once looking away from the heavy, clinging shadows. The candle flame flickered and danced with every step but did little to brighten them; they seemed to absorb the light, consuming it greedily, and with every step that Caleb took back towards his bedroom door the longer the shadows seemed to stretch, inching across the floor towards him.

He lifted his free hand, reaching up behind his back once he felt the press of wood against his spine. He fumbled blindly, locating the doorknob. It was chilly beneath his fingertips, slick and cold, but it felt real. It felt safe.

His heart in his throat, his eyes still on the shifting, twisting shadows, Caleb turned the doorknob.

There was a _click_.

He stepped backwards, pushing against the wood, and felt his back thud into a firmly shut door.

_No_. No, no, no. Caleb felt his heart picking up, his breath coming shorter as the candle flame, just for a moment, dimmed. He twisted the handle again, feeling the latch mechanism turning inside the door, but the door remained unmoving behind him, as solidly closed as if it had been locked shut. More solid than that, even – even a locked door would shift slightly, the latch moving in the scant few millimetres of void space that surround it, but there was no movement to Caleb’s bedroom door. It didn’t shift at all, unrelenting beneath his weight. It felt almost as though there was some weight on the other side of it, forcing it shut so strongly that it was as if it wasn’t a door at all but merely part of the wall, carved and adorned for no other reason than to trick him.

Caleb twisted the doorknob again. It clicked, the sound echoing in the darkness before the shadows swallowed it, but the door didn’t open. He turned it again, and then again, shaking it desperately until the entire hallway was full of nothing but the sound of the doorknob turning and his frantic, rapid breathing. _No_ , he thought again, his thoughts panicked and urgent. _No, no. There must be some explanation. There **has** to be some explanation_.

He shut his eyes for a moment, plunging his vision into darkness as his hand grew lax around the doorknob. _Think, Widogast_. There was always a reasonable explanation, no matter what. There was a reasonable explanation for this. There had to be.

Caleb took a breath, forcing the air into his lungs. This could be many things. It could be a faulty latch mechanism, or something jammed under the door, or it could be- it could be- yes, it could be an air pressure imbalance. His bedroom door back in Rexxentrum tended to shut itself if he left his window open, and was then much harder to open from the other side. That was what was happening here. Nothing else. All he had to do was open the front door to the manor to balance the air pressure, open his bedroom door – making sure to wedge it ajar – and then shut the front door. Then he could go to bed. That was all.

That was all.

Caleb opened his eyes again. The hallway was as dark as ever, ominous and foreboding, and, somehow, it seemed longer now, stretched and warped as though the shadows were twisting his perception of it. It was only a trick of the light, though. Caleb knew that. This was only shadows, and shadows could not hurt him. Nothing in this house could hurt him.

_There is no such thing as ghosts._

Not giving himself any more time to think, Caleb walked forwards. The shadows slipped away before the light of the candle flame, gathering around him as though waiting for the candle to burn itself out. With sure, certain steps, Caleb crossed the hallway, already having memorised the layout of what parts of the house he had explored. He could feel the back of his neck prickling, could feel his heart still drumming away beneath his ribs, but he calmed himself as best he could. This was fine. This was alright. There was a reasonable explanation for everything.

The entrance hall loomed up before him, a darker void amongst the shadows. There was no question in Caleb’s mind of where the staircase was and yet the sudden appearance of it still caught him by surprise, as though it wasn’t quite where it was supposed to be. But that was ridiculous, of course. This was a house, built of brick and stone and wood. It couldn’t move. It couldn’t change, not on its own. Caleb swallowed down his irrational fear and stepped onto the staircase, the light of his candle flickering and swaying with every step. He could feel the stairs shifting and creaking beneath him, just how they had every time he had walked up or down them so far, but they made no actual sound. Nothing in the house made any sound. All he could hear was his breathing, and the rustle of his clothes, and his heart _beat beat beat_ ing beneath his ribs, the sound of it rising in his mind until it was all he could hear, drumming faster and faster and faster as the house stayed so ceaselessly, resolutely silent.

Almost unconsciously, he realised that the grandfather clock that he had so meticulously wound the previous day was no longer ticking, and felt what little panic he had managed to suppress start to rise all over again. Clocks stopped ticking sometimes. That was something that happened, and he knew it, but they should not stop ticking so early. He had heard the clock when he returned from town just a few short minutes ago. He had heard it when entering his bedroom.

He did not hear it now.

_Scheiße_ , Caleb thought to himself, and even in his own head his thoughts were breathless with creeping, dawning fear. _Scheiße, Scheiße, verdamnt!_

He couldn’t panic. He _couldn’t_ panic. There was nothing here to be afraid of, there couldn’t be, there was no such thing as ghosts or demons or the supernatural and there never had been, and yet all the same Caleb found himself staring into the darkness, his steps faltering as he twisted and turned in search of an enemy that he had never believed in before, but the light of his candle showed up nothing but yet more shadows, broken up now by the occasional glint of light of a gilt picture frame. He just needed- he needed- he needed something, _anything_ to distract his mind, to keep him from spiralling further. He looked to his right, and saw the candlelight shining over the paintings that adorned the stairs. Yes. Yes, that would do. He was good with details. He was _very_ good with details. He squeezed the candlestick in his hand and slowly, cautiously, leaned in closer to the painting, doing his best to catalogue as much of it as possible in an attempt to calm his racing, panicking mind.

The portrait was a fine one, well made and well detailed. It showed a group of three people – two tieflings and a half-elf – arranged in the classic positioning of a family portrait. The half-elf was sat in an elegant, high-backed chair, his hands neatly clasped in his lap and a proud smile on his face. Like so many half-elves, it was hard to pin down his exact age, but if Caleb were to hazard a guess, he would have to say that he appeared to be around middle-age. His ashy brown hair was long, done up in a collection of intricate braids, and he was as well dressed as the two tieflings who stood to either side of his chair. Each of the tieflings had one hand on the back of the half-elf’s chair, stood so as to be slightly behind it, and even at a glance Caleb could tell the twins apart.

Lucien – for it could only be Lucien, his face unmarked by ink and his horns unpierced – looked directly ahead, the corner of his mouth quirked in a small, private smile, as though he knew something that the viewer did not. He was solemnly dressed in dark blues and neat, pristine black, every item of his attire exactly where it was supposed to be, his cravat perfectly tied. He looked formal, almost regal, professional and businesslike and exactly what the son of a manor lord was supposed to look like.

Despite their identical faces, he didn’t look anything like Mollymauk.

Even at a glance, Mollymauk was a different creature entirely to Lucien. His posture, while good, was noticeably more relaxed than that of his brother, the smile of his face wider and openly happier than Lucien’s. Where Lucien’s smile was private, for him and him alone, Molly’s smile invited the entire world to share in whatever joy he had found. He looked inviting, cheerful and friendly and so colourful that he very nearly outshone the elaborate set dressing of the painting itself. His waistcoat in this painting was not the one that Caleb had seen in his dream, but it was just as ornate – it was made of a rich red fabric, embroidered with countless sigils and symbols. It should have looked obnoxious, too flamboyant for the portrait, but it didn’t. Somehow, it worked. It suited Mollymauk.

There was also, Caleb realised as he looked closer, a smudge on the painting. It rested just over Mollymauk’s chest, a little smear of dark rust-red that could only be seen when the light hit it just so. It could have been a slip on the behalf of the painter, or a stain left long ago by some guest or visitor. It almost certainly was. It, like everything else that was going on, almost certainly had an entirely sensible explanation.

Caleb swallowed. He pulled his gaze away from the stain, looking back at Gustav. The lord’s smile was slight but it was definitely there, radiating a quiet sense of pride. Caleb leaned closer to the painting. He didn’t recognise the room that it had been painted in, but he suspected that it was somewhere in the house. A drawing room, possibly. That would make the most sense.

From the corner of his eye, in one half on the painting, he thought he saw something move. He shifted his gaze quickly, glancing back over to Mollymauk. Everything appeared normal. In the flickering, dancing light of the candle everything appeared to be shifting slightly anyway, the colours moving and blurring as the firelight coated them in gold and amber. _Nothing here_ , Caleb told himself. _Nothing to be afraid of_.

And then he spotted it.

Mollymauk’s hand, once gently clasped around Gustav’s chair, had moved. It still rested atop the chair but it now lay palm-up on the rich fabric, the fingers extended forwards as though reaching for something.

As though reaching for someone.

Caleb took a step back, feeling a chill run through his body. This was no trick of the light, he was sure of it. He had a good memory – perfect memory, in fact – and he knew what he had seen. He knew that Mollymauk’s hand had been clasped around the back of the chair, just like Lucien’s.

He raised his candle, inspecting the painting once again from a distance. There was no mistaking it; Mollymauk’s hand had moved, the paint somehow rejecting the position it had been settled in for years on end. It had moved, and nothing else in the painting had. Nothing else in the painting could have moved.

Unable to stop himself, Caleb looked a few inches higher, meeting the painted eyes of Mollymauk Tealeaf. It was hard to track exactly where solid red eyes were looking, but Caleb couldn’t help but feel that they were looking directly at him. He couldn’t help but feel that Mollymauk somehow knew exactly where he was.

He shivered, looking away as goosebumps ran over his body. He tried not to look at the other paintings as he descended the stairs further, but found that his gaze kept unwillingly turning to them, as though drawn in by an indescribable force. The majority of the paintings were of the family, broken up by portraits of other people and elegant, refined landscapes, but in every single one that wasn’t of the family, Caleb still thought he caught flashes of purple. He swallowed, forcing his gaze back to the stairs, but a moment later found himself half-turning to look at the painting closest to him. It was another painting of the family, with Gustav and Lucien positioned as if at work, looking formal and serious beside a desk. There was a curiously empty space in the portrait next to them, as though the painter had meant to use something to fill the space but had forgotten.

And, much closer to the lens of the painting than his father and brother, was Mollymauk, smiling widely and staring directly at Caleb.

In the absolute, suffocating silence of the house, the grandfather clock in the hallway above started to tick again. The sound echoed through the hall, each _tick_ fading away into silence a split second before the next one began, as though the heart of the house itself was starting to beat once more. They rang out around Caleb as he stood in frozen, terrified silence, staring at the painting before him. He couldn’t- this wasn’t- this couldn’t be real. It _couldn’t_ be. This was some- some trick, or some ploy, or some prank pulled by the village folk in an attempt to get him to leave. That was all it was. That was all it could be.

In this painting, just as there was in the previous one, there was a smudge of dark rust-red on Mollymauk’s waistcoat. It was in the same position as the last painting, centred over his chest and gently staining the paint around it. Unbidden, Caleb felt his hand start to rise. It reached out, fingers seeking the surface of the painting. It was probably a trick of the light – it _must_ be a trick of the light – but the smudge on Mollymauk’s waistcoat looked shinier than the paint around it. It looked fresher. Newer.

Caleb’s fingers pressed lightly to the surface of the painting, lingering against the paint, and beneath them he felt the touch of something damp and slick and sticky.

_Blood_.

There was no mistaking it. Caleb drew his hand back, feeling it shake, and stared at the dark red that was now staining his fingertips. For a moment all he could do was stare at it blindly, unseeing and unthinking, but he forced himself to shake off the petrifying fear that he could feel running down his spine like ice. This was fine. This had to be fine. He took a half-stumbled step down the stairs, balling his hand into a fist before wiping the blood off against his trousers. It wasn’t blood. It couldn’t be blood.

He took another step. In the corner of his eye, he could see Mollymauk in the painting that hung beside him. This time, he was even closer to the frame than before, eclipsing his brother on the canvas behind him. Another step. Another painting. Another Mollymauk, one hand half-raised towards Caleb.

By the time Caleb reached the bottom of the staircase, it looked as though Mollymauk was about to climb out of the painting itself.

But he couldn’t focus on that. He couldn’t pay attention to that. There was not time for that, now. He was finally at the base of the stairs, the front door to the manor in sight and his freedom closer than it had ever been. He stepped off the stairs, beginning to cross the entrance hall as carefully as he could. With every step he expected at any moment to hear the tiles ringing out beneath his feet, but they never did. Like the stairs, like the carpet, like _everything_ in this gods-forsaken house, they remained entirely silent, leaving Caleb with no other sound but that of his own breathing and his own racing, panicked heart. The moonlight drifted through the long, narrow windows that adorned the hall, bringing some degree of light to the room, but it wasn’t nearly enough. It glinted off the tiles, shone dully off the polished wooden rail of the banister, but the shadows refused to relent to it, remaining as dark as ever. Even the front door, Caleb realised, was swamped in absolute, impenetrable darkness.

But he had to get to it. He _had_ to. Cautiously, quietly, he crossed the entrance hall, until the old oak of the front door was right before him, barely visible beneath the shadow that filled this area like a void. Caleb reached for the handle, desperation making his hand shake and tremble. It seemed to hang in the space between him and the door, stretching out over a distance that was suddenly so much further than it should have been. He was so _close_. He wasn’t even considering equalising the air pressure, or whatever ridiculous task it was that he’d hoped this would accomplish. He just wanted to _leave_ , to leave this house and leave the strangeness that the moonlight seemed to pull from every corner, and make his way down the hill to Caduceus’ home and only return in the bright, clear sunlight of the morning.

There was no sunlight here. There was just moonlight, and candlelight, and shadow.

And then, as Caleb watched, the shadows started to stretch.

The darkness that clung so closely to the door shifted, twisting and writhing as though it were something half-alive. There was no sound to be heard but Caleb _felt_ the sigh that the shadows issued as they stretched out, extending into something that looked like the diffusion of ink and oil through water. They reached and stretched and twisted, inching out into the moonlight that fell through the tall windows of the hall as, suddenly and all at once, they reached for Caleb.

The shadow lashed out before he could react, leaping across the space between them. It brushed against Caleb’s fingertips, sinking an icy cold chill along his veins in the brief second before he managed to yank his hand away and stumble back. It didn’t hurt, not exactly, but it made Caleb’s insides twist and sharpen, coating his tongue with the taste of rust and making his throat feel slick with blood. He stepped back across the hall, his footsteps just as horribly, awfully silent as they had been on the stairs, and watched as, around the door, the shadows began to move towards him. They extended with that same soundless sigh, sliding over the tiled floor in sinuous, fluid motions.

From up above there was the soft _thunk_ of a clock mechanism, the quiet clicking of the gears, and then, like the ringing of some ancient bell, the grandfather clock started to count the hours.

_Count them_ , Caleb told himself desperately, watching the shadows slithering out towards him. _Count the hours. Remember when you are_.

The clock chimed, the sound echoing through the still air of the house. Caleb turned, the candle dancing in his hand, and, fixing the sound of the chime in his head, sprinted into the darkened corridors of the house.

_One_.

He didn’t know what he was running from. He didn’t know what he running towards. All he knew was that, in that single instance of hearing the clock starting to chime, his fight or flight instinct had abandoned what little pretence of ‘fight’ it had had. Caleb ran, feeling his feet thudding into the floorboards and carpet of the old, ancient house, but hearing no sound from them. Even now, there was no sound of _anything_. There was just his breath, ragged and panting, and the chiming of the clock, and a faint susurrus of noise that he couldn’t be sure was real or not. He hoped it wasn’t. He hoped that he couldn’t truly hear the shadows chasing after him.

_Two._

He knew the layout of what areas of the house he’d explored. He had a perfect memory, could exactly visualise where everything was, and yet the corridor that he found himself sprinting down felt entirely alien to him. He knew, _knew_ that it should lead to the manor’s vast, expansive dining room, but the door that he was looking for seemed to be swallowed by the darkness, made unreal by shadow.

_Three_.

This wasn’t right. _This wasn’t right_. This corridor wasn’t right, and the walls weren’t right, and the shadows and candle and play of moonlight across the ground wasn’t right. The corridor seemed longer than it was supposed to be, stretching away from Caleb as he ran down it with the candle still firmly grasped in his hand. He knew how long this corridor was supposed to be, but with every step that he took the corridor seemed to stretch further, warping and twisting with no care for the reality that normally bound the laws of physics.

Caleb shut his eyes.

_Four_.

He opened his eyes again, and the corridor was as it should be. His feet met the floorboards, shaking the dust that had long since settled in them as he continued to run, feeling the shadows chasing after him. Just ahead of him was the door through to the dining room where he’d been accumulating the necessary documents for the execution of the will, once he located it. It was shut, just how he’d left it earlier, but unlike the front door to the house this door wasn’t coated in shadow. It just looked like a normal, ordinary door.

Caleb sprinted towards it, his hand outstretched.

_Five_.

What was in the dining room? Paperwork, and books, and candles, and long, shuttered windows that he could smash his way through if he needed to. He didn’t want to break the windows, didn’t want to break anything, but in this moment his only thought was to _escape_ by whatever means necessary. He skidded to a stop before the door, panting harshly, and reached for the doorknob. Just as his fingers touched it, he spotted something dark starting to creep down the walls from above.

_Six._

Caleb flinched away from the door, watching as the darkness dripping down the walls started to touch against the doorframe. Everywhere it touched it stained the wood a rich, dark red, filling the air with the stench of rust and decay. It shone faintly in the light of his candle, glinting and glistening damply. Caleb turned his head, looking back along the corridor. Everywhere he looked, he saw the same liquid running down the other walls in streams and rivulets, pooling on the floorboards beneath it.

_Seven_.

The liquid wasn’t just pooling on the floorboards, he realised now. It wasn’t just running down the walls, slow and steady like the meltwater of a glacier. He could see it staining the ceiling, droplets of it running together and accumulating into larger, darker marks. They dripped slowly, steadily, but no matter how much Caleb strained his hearing, his still couldn’t hear anything. He could only see, could only watch as the ceiling darkened and the shadows crept and the liquid started to run over painting frames and canvases, marring and marking everything within sight. From beneath the door of the dining room, Caleb thought he could see the liquid starting to seep out, oozing like blood from a half-healed wound. Behind him he could feel the shadows whispering, murmuring to one another, and then something cold and solid and as ephemeral as smoke wrapped suddenly around his ankle, yanking sharply, and Caleb went tumbling to the floor.

_Eight_.

He thudded against the ground, the candle dropping from his hand as he tried to grab onto anything to break his fall. It bounced and rolled on the wood, the metal of its holder making no noise despite the height of the fall. With a wild, desperate movement Caleb yanked himself free of the icy embrace, pulling himself towards the candle and snatching it up. By some miracle the flame hadn’t been extinguished in the fall; it stilled flickered and danced, the only light that Caleb could see in a world of darkness as, as if taking advantage of his fear, the shadows crept in closer still.

_Nine_.

There was nothing he could do. There was _nothing_ he could do. There was nowhere he could go, nowhere he could run, no clever trick he could pull to leave this situation, where nothing was as it should be and where reality was no longer something that he could understand. He had only his candle, and his wits, and right now neither were sufficient.

Caleb shut his eyes, squeezing the candle holder so hard it hurt, and counted the chimes of the grandfather clock.

_Ten_.

_Eleven._

_Twelve_.

Silence.

Caleb opened his eyes, and was no longer on the ground floor of the house. He was in the corridor outside his bedroom again, the grandfather clock ticking quietly at the end of the hallway. Before him he could see the open void that marked the entrance hall and the stairs leading down to it, just barely illuminated by the flickering light of the candle that he still held. He could see his bedroom door too, now, just a handful of steps away along a corridor that looked almost as normal as it was possible for anything to look in this moment. The corridor didn’t seem to be impossibly long. It didn’t seem to be stretching and warping before his eyes. It didn’t appear to be stained with blood, and the shadows that still painted the walls were as deep as ever but no longer moving, no longer reaching for him with searching, prying, formless limbs. Right now, that was enough. Caleb lifted a hand to his face, scrubbing it over his eyes and cheeks. When he pulled it away, there was no blood to be seen.

And then, just on the edge of hearing, the whispers started.

They rose like a wave, like a flood, quiet at first but quickly rising in volume, dancing from place to place as though spoken by an unseen, invisible crowd that now filled the hallway. Caleb twisted and spun in place, the candle flame flickering and dancing as he desperately sought for any possible source of the noise. He wanted to tell himself that it was just the breeze. He wanted to tell himself that what he was hearing was nothing more than the wind moving around the old, stone protrusions of the house, sighing down the chimneys and murmuring at the gaps beneath the doors. He wanted to tell himself that if he really, truly strained his hearing, he could still hear the scraping and tapping of branches against the windows.

He wanted to tell himself that this, like everything else he had experienced recently, had a perfectly logical, reasonable explanation.

He wanted to tell himself all of that, but he couldn’t. There was no explanation for this, and this was not the breeze. This was not the wind. Caleb knew that, now, beyond a shadow of doubt. The wind did not speak like this. It muttered, yes, and it whispered and moaned and tugged at hair and clothing when outside, but it did not speak. It did not articulate the way that these whispers did. They blurred together, so many and so layered that Caleb could barely make them out, but he didn’t need to. He didn’t have to follow one whisper from beginning to end. The small glimpses that he caught were more than enough to help him understand them.

_Leave… stranger in my house_

_Get out, run, **go**_

_…should not be here…_

_Why do you come here?_

_I see you I see you I see you I see you_

_Watching_

_Unsafe you do not **belong**_

**** _He will find you he will see you_

_Behind you_

**_Caleb!_ **

The last whisper was loud, spoken directly against his ear. Caleb could feel cold breath against his neck, could feel his skin prickling where the voice had sighed against his skin. He raised a hand, pressing it over his ear and flinching away from the source of the sound even as he found himself turning to face it, his feet unpleasantly noiseless on the carpeted floor. There should be sound here. There should be the noise of his shoes scuffing over the carpet, disturbing the dust, but there wasn’t. There wasn’t anything. There was just the whispers, and the darkness, and what was standing behind him.

No, not ‘what’. _Who_.

Standing directly behind him, barely a foot away, was the tiefling from Caleb’s dreams. He looked unreal, as ethereal and transient as smoke, and yet at the time he seemed to hold more reality than anything else in the house did at all. His skin was a soft, pale purple, washed in gold and painted in amber by the light of Caleb’s candle, and the peacock inked onto his cheek looked so vibrant as to be almost alive, as though at any moment it may stretch its wings and take flight. His waistcoat was as beautifully and elaborately embroidered as before, still just as soaked with blood, and in the depths of his rich, ruby-red eyes, Caleb could see the candle flame dancing.

The tiefling smiled.

Caleb leapt back, tripping over his own feet and landing on the carpet with the candle held out desperately before him. He felt his own breath leave him in a gasp at the sight of the tiefling, his heart now thundering in his chest as though ready to break free of his ribs at any moment. He scrambled backwards, pushing himself to his feet and back along the corridor. His bedroom, he just had to get to his bedroom. He just had to keep hold of the candle, and get to his bedroom, and get inside and out from the absolute, cloying darkness and _away_ from the tiefling.

He just had to get away from Mollymauk.

But he couldn’t. He _couldn’t_. He knew now that there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, that the house played by its own rules and that Mollymauk, like the house, seemed to care little for whatever realities Caleb was accustomed to. Mollymauk reached out towards him, his hands stretching and warping unnaturally as though being stretched between two points. Caleb jerked back, his every action made twitchy and swift by his desperation to get away, but it wasn’t enough; Mollymauk’s hands came to settle on his face within moments, as cold as ice and as ethereal as smoke. Caleb felt himself shiver, goosebumps raising on his arms as Mollymauk stepped in closer. He could feel the tiefling’s breath ghosting over his face, cool and dry and smelling of lavender.

“ _Leave_ ,” Mollymauk whispered. He took a step closer, and then another, his form flickering and wavering like the candle that still danced in Caleb’s hands. His body seemed to melt and reform constantly, being tugged down into the shadows as it stretched and warped, permanently tethered to the darkness that surrounded them. Behind him his tail shifted and swayed, impossibly long and impossibly sharp. “ _You need to leave this place_.”

Caleb swallowed. His throat was dry, seized up by panic and fear, but all the same he forced the words out as best he could. “Who- I- why? What is here?”

“ _Leave_ ,” Mollymauk repeated. “ _Do not wait for him_.”

“Wait for who?”

“ _Do not wait_.”

“For _who_? Who is coming- who is going to be here, Mollymauk?”

Mollymauk didn’t answer. His eyes were wide now, his smile faded, and his hands on Caleb’s cheeks ceased to sting with cold. He took another step in, his form almost seeming to solidify as he looked at Caleb. “ _Please_ ,” he whispered, “ _Please. I do not wish for you to come to harm_.”

Caleb blinked. After everything he’d just experienced, after everything the house had done to him, after everything _Mollymauk_ had done, the words felt… unexpected, and yet, all the same, Caleb found that he couldn’t disbelieve them. Mollymauk looked surprisingly sad, his smile now entirely gone as an expression akin to fear crossed his face, as though he were truly, genuinely worried for Caleb’s safety. “ _I do not wish for you to come to harm_ ,” he repeated. His voice was softer now, quieter and gentler, and, just for a second, Caleb felt something in his chest squeeze at the true, genuine concern he could hear in it.

Mollymauk stretched up, his face lined with worry, and pressed a soft, careful kiss to Caleb’s forehead.

And vanished.

Abruptly, the whispers ceased. The entire house fell silent, the whispers stopping just as suddenly as they’d started, leaving Caleb alone in the darkness. The house was entirely quiet around him, no branches scratching against the windows and no wind fluttering around the building. There was no sound at all now, actually, no sound apart from Caleb’s own fast, terrified breaths. His chest heaved as he looked around, the flame of the candle held between his hands glowing like some sort of beacon, but all he saw was darkness, and shadow, and the light of the flame stroking along the wallpaper. Slowly, gradually, the darkness faded, retreating back to the shadows that dwelled sullenly in the corners of the house and in the shadowed arches of the rafters. To one side the opening into the entrance hall revealed itself fully, the moonlight filtering through the tall windows that adorned its walls and filling the chamber with a soft, silver light.

With the light came noise. It was faint, barely there, but the moment Caleb heard the now-familiar sound of branches he almost cried with relief, feeling the sob catch in his chest. He could hear the wind whistling around the stonework, could hear the branches tapping and scraping, could hear the floorboards creaking beneath his feet every time he shifted his weight. Everything seemed normal again. Everything seemed safe again. The hallway was filled with moonlight, and sound had returned to his world, and he was so, so close to his bedroom, and to the void of sleep. Caleb reached out, resting his free hand against the wall to support himself, and took a breath. The air tasted of nothing more than dust and the dampness that suffused the house. There was no rust on his tongue this time. There was no blood on the back of his throat.

Caleb took another breath, and then another, waiting until his heart no longer felt seconds away from ceasing to beat altogether to move away from the wall. He took a small, tentative step, the floor creaking faintly beneath his weight, and when no whispers rose up to meet him he took another, gradually inching his way along the corridor. He could see the door to the room he had claimed as his bedroom now, could hear Frumpkin meowing plaintively just beyond it. He reached out. It was close, so close. His fingers brushed the metal of the door handle, curling around it, and, with a quiet _click_ of a latch turning, he tugged the door open and stepped through.

A small, dark shape came sprinting out of the darkness before him. Caleb stumbled back, waving the candle before him as though attempting to fend it off, but the moment it moved into the circle of candlelight he relaxed.

“ _Frumpkin_ ,” he murmured. He dropped to his knees, reaching out with a shaky hand to place the candle back down on the bedside table. The flame seemed to stabilise, no longer flickering and dancing but instead burning strong and steady, gradually pulling more light into the room. “Frumpkin, _schatz_ … you startled me.”

Frumpkin butted his head up against Caleb’s legs, pressing up into the hand that came down to pet him. He purred quietly, softly, winding around Caleb as though he had been gone for hours. Maybe he had been. Caleb couldn’t tell. His sense of time, normally so good and so precise, had been warped by the darkness and the silence and the whispers. It still looked to be night time, the sun not yet having risen above the horizon, but whether it was late evening, or midnight, or a few hours to dawn, Caleb couldn’t tell. All he knew was that, with every passing second, more and more normality started to creep back into his life. The ground beneath his knees felt real and stable; he could feel the solid wood of the floorboards, could hear them creaking and groaning slightly beneath him as he shifted his weight to accommodate his affectionate cat. Beyond the windows, the wind muttered and the branches tapped and searched, still clawing against the old stonework, but the sounds no longer felt ominous. They felt comfortable, familiar. They were an indication that everything was right in the world, that the world that Caleb was in was still the one he knew, and not one where dead tieflings stalked the hallways of an abandoned house and told him to flee.

Caleb bowed his head, pressing his forehead to Frumpkin’s as the cat stretched up to meet him. “ _Schatz_ ,” he murmured quietly, running one hand down Frumpkin’s back and scratching the fur at the base of his tail. “Oh, Frumpkin… it is good to see you again, my friend.”

Frumpkin purred louder, reaching up to rest his front paws on Caleb’s folded legs. He rubbed his face against Caleb’s head and neck, winding around him and pressing up against him as best he could, as though he had missed Caleb as much as Caleb had missed him. Caleb continued to pet him, running a hand along Frumpkin’s back and scratching him under the chin as gradually, slowly, his heart rate returned to normal.

It was only when Caleb felt like he was as calm as he was likely to ever be within the house that he forced himself to move.

“Come on, _schatz_ , it is time for bed.” He petted Frumpkin once more and then stood, reaching out to rest a hand on the wall to support himself. The room looked no different now to how it had before he left it, but he could still hear the whispers murmuring at the back of his mind, could still see the shadows waiting at the corners of his vision. It was easier with Frumpkin here, undeniably, but Caleb was still shaken to his core. What had just happened in the hallway… there was no logical explanation for that. There was nothing that Caleb could say or do to convince himself that this was fine, and that everything was normal, and that the house was just draughty enough to inexplicably extinguish an entire hallway of lit torches and stop a grandfather clock from ticking.

Caleb paused, straining his ears. From the end of the hallway he could faintly hear the _tick-tock_ of the grandfather clock, slowly and calmly counting out the passing seconds. He sighed out a long breath, shutting his eyes for a moment as the sound filled his senses. Everything was fine. Everything was normal. He had Frumpkin by his feet, still purring furiously, and he had a candle on the bedside table, illuminating the room, and there was no blood on his face or breath against his neck and no tiefling standing before him, beautiful and terrifying and soaked through with blood.

There was no one here.

Caleb took another breath, and then another. Slowly, jerkily, he started to undress, folding his clothes with automatic, unthinking hands before pulling on his nightshirt and lifting the covers of the bed. He slipped beneath the musty blankets, barely having to wait a second before Frumpkin jumped up next to him, pressing close against his side before curling up next to him. From his position on the bed Caleb could see all the way to the door - he could see the candlelight glinting off the handle, could see the shadows that slipped beneath the threshold, but these were ordinary shadows, static and quiet. With the moon shining through the window the entire room seemed lighter, actually, the shadows fading to grey and silver until Caleb could almost see through them.

No shadows, climbing and twisting like oil. No voices, murmuring and whispering against his neck. No tieflings.

No ghosts.

Caleb rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling as Frumpkin started to snore quietly beside him. Everything seemed safe now, still and quiet, but he couldn’t shake the terror from his nerves, couldn’t shake the certainty that this wasn’t over yet.

He took a deep breath, tasting the dust on his tongue, and shut his eyes.

Sleep, that night, was a long time in coming. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be posted on **July 31st!**


	4. Chapter 4

Caleb slept poorly that night, tossing and turning and waking in starts at every faint touch of sound that drifted across his hearing. The branches that tapped against the window, so comforting and reassuring when he heard them last night, made him feel uneasy now, putting him in mind of the creeping, twisting shadows that had reached for him as he ran. The whistle of the wind reminded him of the whispers that had swarmed around him and of the soft sound of Mollymauk’s voice, quiet and unexpectedly gentle in the darkness of the house. More than once he was woken to the sound of rustling downstairs, as though something – or someone – were leafing through the old, dusty books that still adorned the bookshelves. He tried to tell himself that it was just the wind blowing through the leaves of the branches outside, tried to squeeze his eyes shut tighter and will himself back to sleep, but every time he woke it felt like hours passed before he fell asleep again. He couldn’t delude himself, not after last night. He still wasn’t sure how much of it had been real and how much of it had simply been the oppressive atmosphere of the house coupled with the haunting words of the village folk that had given rise to a terrible, horribly realistic dream, but it _felt_ real. It felt like it had happened.

Even now, lying in bed beneath the musty blankets with his cat lying curled at his side, he could still remember the chill touch of a shadow around his ankle, and of an icy hand against his face, and of cool lips pressing against his forehead. Even now, he could remember the pained, worried look in Mollymauk’s eyes. Eventually he dozed off again, but his sleep was restless and erratic. When he dreamed, in fits and starts and little tiny, fleeting moments, he dreamed of purple skin, and of peacocks overlaid in blood, and of darkness wrapping him close and tight in its embrace.

By the time Caleb woke fully, it was only just gone dawn. His curtains, left open in his haste to find peace and solace in slumber the previous night, let in the slowly growing sunlight, painting the walls and floor with a soft silver-gold light. It was weak and feeble, dampened by the thick clouds that still hung overhead, heavy with the promise of rain, but it was sunlight all the same. It was something. It was enough. Caleb stirred himself after a few moments of quiet, contemplative silence, pushing himself to rise and dress as Frumpkin stretched and yawned on the bed, settling down for a quick groom which Caleb only distracted him from once he was ready to leave the room.

“ _Katze_ ,” he called, catching Frumpkin’s attention. He inclined his head towards the door, opening it just slightly. “ _Hier_.”

Frumpkin gave a short, somewhat disgruntled _mew_ , hopping down off the bed and trotting out of the open bedroom door. Caleb felt himself tense slightly as Frumpkin walked past him and out into the hallway, the memory of the night before still fresh and unpleasant in his mind, but there was no sound beyond the branches still tapping against the panes of the window. He could hear the grandfather clock ticking away, could hear the creaking of the door and the whistle of the wind. There was none of the awful, oppressive silence of last night. The hallway seemed to be fine.

From beyond the half-ajar door, Caleb heard Frumpkin give a soft, curious ‘ _Miaow_?’

He sighed. “ _Ja_ ,” he muttered. “ _Ja, ja_ , I am coming with you.” He swallowed, shifting uncomfortably in place for a moment before opening the door wide. The sight that greeted him was the exact same one he had seen his first morning in the manor – the hallway was exactly how it had always been, coated in dust that had since been disturbed by his own footsteps, and the footsteps of Frumpkin, and-

And there were the footprints of another person in the kicked-up dust yet again. They were harder to make out this time, the dust having already been trampled down by Caleb traversal through the house the previous morning, but they were undeniably there. Caleb stepped slowly out into the hallway, hearing Frumpkin’s paws padding over the solid wood of the staircase as the cat made his way downstairs. He could clearly see his own footprints in the dust, crisscrossing back and forth, but the same footprints that had so disturbed him upon leaving the bathroom yesterday seemed to be present again. He could see them standing opposite his own, right where he had stood when face to face with the spectre of Mollymauk the previous night.

Caleb glanced up, swiftly looking from side to side along the hallway. He didn’t know what he was trying to see, or if he wanted to see anything at all. The sight of another living being in this moment would terrify him as much as it would relieve him, but he saw nothing more than the hallway, and the growing sunlight glinting off the pendulum of the grandfather clock as it swung back and forth.

In the shine of the glass facing of the clock, Caleb thought he glimpsed a single flash of purple.

 _There is no one there_ , he told himself, feeling the ice run down his spine. _There has never been anyone here but you and Frumpkin_. _You are only imagining things_.

Caleb reached out his foot, and in one swift movement, scuffed the stranger’s footprints from the carpet. He took a moment to breathe, steadying his mind and settling his nerves, and then, only glancing back over his shoulder a couple of times, he followed Frumpkin downstairs and to breakfast. He ate quickly and quietly in the house’s large, chilly kitchen as Frumpkin ate his own breakfast by the door, trying to ignore the barely-audible creaking of floorboards above and around them. The room was still and quiet, the counters coated with dust and the large, beautiful oven pockmarked by rust from where the damp had got in, but beyond the walls Caleb could still hear the branches murmuring and scratching and the soft whistle of the wind. He’d only been at the house for two days but the sounds had already become shockingly familiar to him, as though they were the very breath of the house itself. He cleaned his dishes carefully, setting them to dry on the one clean-looking part of the drying rack, and then decided on what he would be doing for the remainder of the morning. He had many, many hours until Caduceus would arrive at the house to provide him with his lift to the bottom of the hill. Caleb still wasn’t sure how much of Caduceus’ story of people getting lost and turned around on a direct path he believed, but after the events of last night he felt undeniably warier, on-edge and slightly twitchy as though his body was ready to bolt and run at any given moment. Right now, he didn’t feel like risking the mist. Right now, he would much rather wait for the sight of another living being.

Which meant, if he were honest, that all he _could_ do was continue his work from the previous morning. He still had many rooms to explore and potentially gather documents from, still had locked doors to open and new corners of the house to uncover, but the thought of pushing beyond the areas of the house he already knew made him feel uncomfortable down to his bones. Houses could not live, could not breathe, and he _knew_ that auras were just as unreal as ghosts were, but all the same he felt the presence of something dwelling within and throughout the house. Until he had calmed down further, he would not distress himself by looking into places unknown. For now, for this morning, he would entertain himself with something that he knew he would understand. After all, he’d left a significant stack of papers on the table of the dining room the previous day. There was no good reason not to make a start on them.

Caleb nodded to himself, starting to move towards the door into the hallway. “Entertain yourself,” he called back to Frumpkin as he left the room, making sure to leave the door open behind himself. “Go and find some mice to chase.”

He heard Frumpkin meow back at him as he walked out into the hallway, tracing his steps of the previous night as made his way to the large dining room. He couldn’t stop his gaze from flickering across the walls as he walked down the shadowed hallways, searching for any indications of blood or writhing shadows, but he saw nothing. All around him, the house was still and calm and quiet, and the door to the dining room opened easily at his touch, the doorknob turning without resistance. Caleb opened the door, walked through, and immediately froze in place.

The papers that he had stacked so neatly on the dining table the previous day had been flung into disarray, scattered across the floor as though a storm had torn through the room at some point in the night. They lay strewn across the floor now, some of them still gathered on the table but the vast majority scattered about seemingly at random. Caleb sighed a little, picking his way further into the room. This must have been Frumpkin’s doing during the previous day, or the result of a breeze let in through a poorly sealed window. He dismissed from his mind the thought that his bedroom door had been shut tight the previous night – after all, he had spent the majority of the previous day away from the house, giving Frumpkin more than enough time to run loose and generally wreak havoc. Nevermind that Frumpkin rarely, if ever, did that. Nevermind that Frumpkin knew better than to disturb Caleb’s paperwork. Nevermind that Caleb had left this door shut before he left, just on the off-chance that Frumpkin would do exactly what he had never done. It must have been Frumpkin. It could only have been Frumpkin who had left the room in such a state.

Except, Caleb slowly realised, the randomly scattered papers didn’t quite look entirely random. For all that the papers were mostly loose now, freed from the precise, pristine, organised stacks that Caleb had left them in, the longer that Caleb looked the more he noticed a strange sense of structure to their layout, as though the same wind that had disrupted them had attempted to tidy them into some semblance of order. Caleb placed his briefcase down on the table, frowning to himself as he started to inspect the stacks. When he’d left them before going into the village the previous day they had been organised by the room in which he’d found them. It was an imperfect system, doing little more than helping him group the files by location, but it had been a start. He had been planning to accumulate as much as he could and then, once every scrap of potentially useful information had been gathered, reorganise them by content or form.

Except, he realised upon looking closer, it seemed that he didn’t need to.

It seemed that something had already done that for him.

He crossed the room, crouching down to inspect a misshapen mound of papers by the fireplace. They shifted as he approached them, the weight of his footstep causing sheets to slip free with a rustle of paper against paper, but the loose stack itself remained mostly intact, seemingly undisturbed by the faint breeze which sighed down the chimney flue to stir the long-dead ash that rested in the bottom of it. The papers in this stack all appeared, at a glance, to be folded, some in halves and some into thirds, and here and there Caleb thought he caught the shape of an envelope, or the colourful shine of a postage stamp. He reached out, taking the topmost item from the stack. The sheet of paper crinkled beneath his fingers as he unfolded it, the sound seeming to hang in the strange, absolute silence of the house and estate. The house’s address was written in the topmost corner, followed by a short message.

> _Dear Gustav,_
> 
> _It has been so long since we spoke. I hope you are well, and that your fine sons are likewise in good health. I would be very happy to visit your estate at any time of your choosing, though I must inform you that the carnival will be departing soon for Felderwin. Perhaps, if I am unable to visit you, you could visit myself and the other members of the troupe. We have not seen you since you parted from us and left the carnival in the hands of myself and Bosun, but I am sure that your sons would enjoy the trip, and we have much to catch up on._
> 
> _I hope to hear from you soon._
> 
> _In friendship,_
> 
> \- _Orna._

The letter was written in a fine, legible hand, though it was not quite so elegant as the few letters that Caleb had found from Lord Gustav himself. Caleb frowned to himself, putting the paper aside and picking up another one. This one was written in a much neater script, and even the paper itself felt more expensive, thicker and sturdier than the cheap notepaper that the previous letter had been written upon.

> _Dear Lord Fletching,_
> 
> _I thank you for your letter and newspaper slip. I would have replied immediately, but I wished for time to read and consider Lord Gilmore’s letter. I am likewise of the opinion that Master Lucien’s upcoming visit to Rexxentrum would be a fine opportunity for him to become more familiar with the partakings of business there. Myself, Lord Pumat, Lord Pumat, and Lord Pumat would be delighted to host him for a number of days and introduce him to a gathering of fine business people with whom we are familiar. We ask only that, should he decide to undertake one of his many considered business ventures in Rexxentrum, he consider working alongside us in his venture. Myself and my fellow Pumats feel that this would be advantageous for all of us due to our established relationships with fellow merchants, the good reputation with which we maintain, and the new ideas and innovations that your son will be presenting to us._
> 
> _We await your swift reply._
> 
> _Yrs._
> 
> _Lord Pumat (primus), Lord Pumat, Lord Pumat, & Lord Pumat_

Another letter. Another letter that Caleb knew for a fact he had not grouped with the previous one, having found them both in separate rooms of the house. He carefully placed it down atop the other letter, absently aligning them as best he could, and then picked up another item from the stack. This one, he noticed, was still in its envelope. Beneath it, on another folded sheet, he could read an address.

Every single item in this stack was a letter, gathered from all over the house. Caleb had not done this – he knew that. He had never been prone to sleepwalking, or to sleep-talking, and he simply couldn’t believe that he had, at some point during the night, stirred himself from his fretful slumber and reorganised a table’s worth of gathered documents. Part of his mind, the part that insisted so strongly that what had happened the previous evening had been nothing more than a bout of abrupt hysteria, clung to the idea, but it wasn’t true. Caleb knew that now. He had not reorganised these documents, and neither had any other living being. They had not been scattered at random, by a breeze let in through some half-ajar window. There was intent to their layout. There was purpose.

Which meant that someone else, someone not entirely alive, had reorganised them instead.

“Mollymauk,” Caleb murmured to himself, and felt a shiver run down his spine. Even now, even with the memories of last night still so sharp and vivid in his mind, he did not want to let himself believe in ghosts. There was no way – there _should_ be no way – that a dead man could be capable of moving papers, or leaving footprints in a dusty hallway, or interacting with the realm of the living in any way beyond what parts of him survived in memory, and Mollymauk was dead. He was undeniably dead, and gone, and he could not have done this. Someone else must have done this.

Someone else must have been in the house with him last night. The thought made Caleb’s skin crawl; somehow, for some reason, the thought that a fellow living being may be in the house with him was indescribably worse than the concept of sharing a dwelling with a ghost who abided by no laws that Caleb knew or could understand. It was absurd, to feel such a way. A living person could be spoken to, reasoned with, or at the very least they could be held back by a sturdy door. A living person could be escaped from.

But not a ghost. And, now, Caleb’s certain disbelief in the supernatural felt as feeble and as treacherous as a sheet of ice.

“You are going crazy,” he muttered to himself, his lips quirking in a small, self-deprecating smile. It was not the first time he had said that to himself. He doubted it would be the last. “You are going crazy, and you are forgetting what you know, Widogast. There is time for that later.” There was time to deliberate on the existence of ghosts later.

Caleb placed the letter from the Lords Pumat to one side, taking another from the pile and scanning it. This one, like the previous one he had looked at, also mentioned Lucien paying a visit to a larger town – specifically, it mentioned his growing plans to cross the ocean to Tal’Dorei and spend a few months abroad in Emon, staying with some of Gustav’s old friends as he continued to look into potential business ventures. The letter mentioned Mollymauk too, suggesting that he may wish to accompany his brother in order to do more than the ‘carousing and revelry’ he seemed to prefer to take part in when visiting the cities. Caleb found himself smiling a little at that. He’d taken a moment while descending the stairs that morning to inspect the portraits that hung beside it – they had all appeared entirely normal, untouched and unchanged from when he first arrived at the house – and he couldn’t help but think that Mollymauk’s bright, loud wardrobe seemed uniquely suited to revelry. He was a colourful enough figure as it was; presumably, after a number of drinks at a bar or similar establishment, he would only become more colourful still.

With that thought still in mind, Caleb quickly thumbed through a few more letters, but found little of interest. The majority seemed the sort of hum-drum, dull letters one would expect to find at an estate such as this, and though he found a number of potential other leads, the one gathered from the letter from the Lords Pumat seemed to be the best he had.

Caleb stood, groaning softly as his knees complained, and crossed quickly to his briefcase, unclasping it and pulling out his own small, personal notebook. It was a neat little thing, carefully bound in dark, chocolate-coloured leather with his initials monogrammed across the middle of the cover in a soft, elegant gold. It had been a gift from Bryce when he had first joined the firm, an indication of Bryce’s faith and trust in hiring some scrawny, half-fed Zemnian boy to work for them. Caleb had only ever used it for jobs where the details got muddled or confused, and only then for jobs where he could not easily remember what was important. In all his years working with the firm, it wasn’t even a third full.

Caleb turned to the newest clean page, untucking the pen that came with it, and, in his own swift, looping hand, made a note of the return address of the letter from the Lords Pumat. Part of his job, now, was to see if he could locate Lucien Tealeaf; there was every chance that, even if he could not locate Lucien on his own, the Lords Pumat may be able to point him in the right direction. He would have added the addresses of the carnival folk, but their letters didn’t seem to bear any return addresses, and the letter from the Lords Pumat had mentioned Lucien specifically by name. That, he felt, would be as good a start as any.

He placed his notebook back down on the table, capping the pen and tucking it between the pages to mark his place before moving on to inspect another mound of papers. He walked past the letters, this time moving to a different, slightly larger stack that rested closer to the edge of the room. Like the mound of letters, this one gave the impression of having been deposited seemingly at random, the sheets of paper and card folders all pushed together instead of being stacked with any of Caleb’s usual neatness, but Caleb knew, now, that that wasn’t the case. There was intelligence here. There was intent. He still did not believe, did not _want_ to believe that it was the long-deceased Mollymauk who had moved the letters, but it could not have been the wind. It could not have been any natural event.

Somewhere in this house, _within_ this house, there was another mind at work.

Beneath his clothes, Caleb felt a shiver run down his spine, gathering chill and unpleasant in the pit of his stomach. He ignored the feeling as best he could, pushing it to one side as he crouched down once again to inspect this mound. He hadn’t been paying a huge amount of attention to the contents of the papers he had been collecting as he went through the house, well aware that he would have many, many rooms to investigate beyond just those he had looked through the previous morning. He had some vague ideas of what some of the papers would be – after all, all estates as large as this required certain amounts of paperwork – but he would still need to hunt down the ones that were actually properly, truly useful to him.

It didn’t take him long to realise that this particular mound probably wasn’t of much use to him. Just from inspecting a few of the folders and sheets of paper it became clear that all the documents here were to do with the care of the manor and the estate – they detailed the wages of the staff, notes of a restoration and repair to be carried out on the south-east corner, weekly food deliveries from Brenatto & Co Grocers down in the village, and other items of a similar nature. Unless it turned out that Lord Gustav had inexplicably changed his entire will to dedicate every last ounce of his belonging to his staff, Caleb doubted he would need to know much – if any – of this information.

“Useless,” he muttered to himself. He dropped the paper he was holding back onto the stack, starting to rise. “Utterly useless.” At the very least, he supposed, he had not needed to spend hours trawling through the papers himself. Someone, for some reason, had already done that for him.

He stood fully, stretching his arms above his head for a moment. In the corridor outside the dining from he briefly heard the soft creaking of floorboards, but he paid it no heed. A house as old as this one was bound to make some strange noises of its own, but all the same he felt his skin prickle, just for a moment, at the memory of the footprints he had found in the dust.

 _No one there_ , he told himself, dropping his arms to his side. _Nothing to be afraid of_.

From the corner of his eye, in the rust-stained silver of the mirror that hung above the fireplace, Caleb thought he spotted a hint of purple.

His head snapped up as he twisted in place, craning back over his shoulder to look towards where he had seen the purple, but the mirror showed nothing but the reflection of the room exactly as it was. The colours in it were slightly paler, washed out by the fine layer of dust that coated the glass, but he could still see the faded red of the walls, the dark wood of the furniture, the shine of the candelabra and the gleam of the doorknob.

He couldn’t see any tieflings.

“You are going crazy,” he muttered to himself again. He stood from the stack of papers, turning to face the room and rubbing his hands against his arms as if trying to distract himself. There was nothing here. There _couldn’t_ be anything here, not outside of himself and Frumpkin. He knew that, as certainly as he knew that his name was Caleb or that the sky was blue. He could see the room before him now, could see his briefcase on the table, and the slightly ajar door that led out into the hallway, and the pleasantly bland landscape pieces that decorated the walls alongside the slightly more ornate and bizarre hangings. Remnants from Lord Gustav’s carnival days, Caleb assumed now, with the letter from Orna still fresh in his mind. That would certainly explain some of the more loud and gaudy pieces that adorned certain rooms throughout the manor. But there was no purple in this piece. There was no purple anywhere in the room.

There was no one here at all. There was no one but himself, slowly feeling all of his certainties crack and shatter around him. _Ghosts do not exist_ , he told himself, repeating the words out loud a moment later. “Ghosts do not exist. You know this.”

And yet, all the same, he looked in the mirror again, hoping and fearing for a sight of a flash of purple.

As part of him hoped – as part of him feared – he saw nothing more than the room, and his own face staring back at him.

Caleb forced himself to take a slow, deep breath, watching his own face in the mirror. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake Mollymauk Tealeaf from his mind. He did not know the tiefling, had never met him or spoken to him prior to his death, and he never _would_ know him. He was dead, passed on, buried in the family cemetery that lived on the manor’s grounds, and Caleb _would never know him_. He would never see him. He needed to get over this unknown man who, somehow, seemed to haunt his waking and sleeping thoughts.

At least, he supposed, he had one way to definitely confirm Mollymauk’s passing.

Caleb crossed quickly to the table, dropping down heavily into a chair as he reached out for his briefcase, starting to rummage through it. He just needed to see this, just for a moment to put his mind at ease, to assure him of what he already knew was the truth. He scrabbled through the papers, pushing them out of the way. He was sure that somewhere in the briefcase was-

There was a soft gust of wind, no more than a light draft, and the papers in his briefcase stirred slightly, rustling quietly. One of them, down at the bottom of it, shifted barely more than an inch, but it was enough. Behind it, Caleb could see exactly what he was looking for.

He reached down, drawing out the coroner’s report that had been included in the preparatory materials for this job. This was not the same coroner’s report that he had read on the train, though. This was not the coroner’s report for Lord Gustav Fletching. This was the other coroner’s report, the one he had glanced at and then immediately dismissed as irrelevant.

This was the coroner’s report of one Mollymauk Tealeaf.

Caleb sat down at the table, pushing his briefcase to one side as he laid the slender card folder flat before him. It was, as all coroner’s reports were, entirely impersonal. Not every job that Caleb attended to involved a coroner’s report, seeing how they were only issued when there was cause to investigate a death, but he had seen more than his fair share. He knew what they were like. He knew the straightforward, cold, medical language used to describe the person they discussed. He knew how, occasionally, they may even involve pictures. He always tried not to look at those, though. He was not a police officer, or a detective, or anyone who had cause to attempt to _solve_ a mystery. He did not need to know how someone died, or why. Most of the time, it was enough for him to know that they had.

There was no reason for him to look at the coroner’s report for Mollymauk Tealeaf. He had Mollymauk’s death certificate, and the obituary in the paper, and even if he had some reason to believe those to be carefully crafted fakes, he could not doubt the truth of Beauregard’s words the previous day, or the emotion in her voice. Her friend, her Mollymauk, was dead and gone. Caleb had no reason to look at this document.

A moment passed, and then Caleb flipped the cover of the folder open. There were a couple of documents contained within, all of which were familiar in structure to him. At the top of the stack was the official death certificate of Mollymauk Tealeaf, detailing the time, year, and location of his death. It seemed that he had, as the newspaper articles had reported, died in Alfield just a few years before his father’s passing. He had no heirs, no family beyond his brother and father. His death certificate was brief, straightforward and to the point. There was nothing unusual about it.

Off to one side, Caleb heard the quiet rustling of paper. He glanced over, expecting to see his cat stepping carefully between the mounds, but saw nothing. _The wind_ , he thought to himself absently. The dusty, velveteen curtains didn’t appear to be moving, but that didn’t surprise him – he knew how heavy such curtains could be, and it often took more than a light draft to disturb them. Satisfied, he turned his attention back to the other sheet of paper contained within the folder. This one was a little more detailed, covered in the chickenscratch penmanship that seemed so common to coroners and other morgue attendants.

> _Name: Mollymauk Tealeaf_
> 
> _Name of Parent (a): Gustav Fletching (adoptive)_
> 
> _Name of Parent (b): n/a_

Caleb frowned, narrowing his eyes as he skimmed the next few sections. Hair colour, eye colour, skin colour… all of it was unimportant. He did not need to know the physical details of Mollymauk’s appearance. He already knew them. He just needed to know what had happened, to satisfy his own curiosity if for no other reason.

> _Notable Injuries: Catastrophic subarachnoid haemorrhage secondary to closed depressed basal fracture. Left horn suffered spiral fracturing. Bruising on neck and face consistent with blunt force. Comminuted scapula body fracture with associated bruising. Haematomas present on upper left arm, ribs and abdomen. On examination abdomen appeared distended, with evidence of haemoperitoneum._

Caleb squinted at the paper, leaning in slightly. He did not wish to doubt the word of the coroner, but he couldn’t help but remember how Molly had looked in his dream, and in whatever it was that had happened to him the previous night. There had been no marks on Molly’s face, no signs of injury or trauma save for the jagged wound that cut across his chest, seeping blood and staining his clothing red. He knew that he should not believe whatever strange nonsense his brain dreamed up, made wild by confusion and unease and the incessant whispering of the wind, but he couldn’t push the image from his mind. Mollymauk had not looked beaten or bruised.

> _Final cause of death: Blunt force trauma leading to brain haemorrhage and death._

That didn’t feel right. That didn’t feel _true_. But it was there, in his hands, printed in black and white and signed across the bottom of the page with the coroner’s signature. According to this piece of paper, according to medical history, Mollymauk Tealeaf had died from a bar brawl gone wrong.

The hairs on the back of Caleb’s neck prickled as another breeze drifted through the room. It brushed over his skin, raising goosebumps on his arms and making the paper rustle when Caleb gave a brief, involuntary shiver. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like any of this.

He didn’t feel like he trusted it.

“Do not do this,” he muttered to himself, putting the paper down resolutely. “Do not- this is not your job right now, Widogast. Forget about Mollymauk. He is not your job.” His job was to locate the last will and testament of Gustav Fletching, assess it, and then locate any inheritors. That was all. Even if he was an inheritor, Mollymauk Tealeaf was undeniably dead and gone. Looking into his death, for whatever reason, would not help this case.

It would not help Caleb.

But he couldn’t leave it alone. Even as he put the paper down, shutting the card folder as if doing his best to wipe it from his thoughts, he could feel the weight of the new knowledge settling heavy in his mind. He could feel the back of his neck prickling under the weight of imagined eyes, and couldn’t stop the short shiver than ran through him. He had no reason to distrust the documents before him. He _knew_ that Mollymauk was dead, beyond a shadow of a doubt – he had read the articles, had seen the death certificate, had heard Caduceus and Beauregard speak of the now-dead tiefling. Of Mollymauk’s passing, there was no doubt. Caleb was not going to argue with that.

But the _cause_ of Mollymauk’s death… that didn’t feel right. Caleb shivered once more, feeling something cold brush against the back of his neck. Behind him, the half-open door into the dining room creaked softly, the hinges groaning as a brief breeze pushed it just another few inches open. Caleb couldn’t forget his dream. He couldn’t forget what he had seen.

He couldn’t forget what Mollymauk had said.

“Leave it alone,” he muttered to himself. The wind sighed again, caressing his skin and playing gently with his hair, sending loose strands fluttering around his face. Without looking up Caleb reached into his pocket, withdrawing a length of dark velvet ribbon and using it to tie his hair back from his face. He could not be distracted. He needed to stay on task. He took a deep breath, resting his hands back on the table top before him. “Get back to work,” he murmured quietly. “Do what you came here to do. Do not get distracted.”

After all, there was still much to be done. Caleb shut the card folder, pushing it away from him with a small, quiet sigh. He didn’t know why he wanted to help so much, to work out the specific details of Mollymauk’s death. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Mollymauk didn’t matter right now, not in the slightest. He wasn’t important. He didn’t matter.

What mattered, right now, was Lord Gustav’s will. Caleb knew he had a copy of one instance of it with his preparatory documents. It was an older copy, one that had been kept as an archival copy within the firm, but it could, perhaps, be a starting place. People tended to rewrite their wills from time to time, be it due to a change in circumstances, shifting family tensions, or something more significant, like the death of an inheritor. Every past will would be rendered null and void by the creation of the new will, but Caleb had found old wills to still maintain some degree of use and usability. Even if certain inheritors had been removed in recent versions, they may still know how to get in touch with inheritors who had gone missing.

Caleb drew out the will from the briefcase, replacing it with the folder detailing Mollymauk’s death. The papers beneath it rustled quietly as he set it down but he resolutely didn’t look at it, keeping his gaze fixed on the old will as he opened the folder it was contained within. He skimmed the first few lines which detailed the specifics of Lord Gustav’s funeral wishes, as well as the statement revoking all previous wills and testaments, and quickly located the part he was looking for.

> **_Pecuniary Legacies, Specific Legacies, and Estates_ **
> 
> _I, Lord Gustav Fletching, give the following specific legacies:_
> 
> _To Mr Caduceus Clay, groundskeeper, I give the property by the name of Blooming Grove Cottage to be his to own and keep in its entirety._
> 
> _To my son, Mollymauk Tealeaf, I give the estate by the name of Milderhall Manor (otherwise referred to as Fletching Manor, Fletching Hill, etc.) and all surrounding and included lands and properties save for those which are excluded by inheritance elsewhere in this Last Will and Testament. With these properties I also leave to my son Mollymauk Tealeaf a small portion of my wealth such as will be sufficient to maintain and care for such an estate. The final value of such an amount shall be decided upon by Mollymauk Tealeaf, Lucien Tealeaf, and any Trustees who are marked herewithin to advise._
> 
> _To my son, Lucien Tealeaf, I leave the remainder of my wealth, save for the portion required for the upkeep of the estate. To Lucien Tealeaf I also leave the physical objects of my wealth, save for those which are excluded by inheritance elsewhere in this Last Will and Testament…_

And so it continued. Caleb took his time reading the document, occasionally reaching out to write a short line down in his notebook. It looked, at first pass, as though Lord Gustav had been generous with his will; every one of his employees was set to receive something, be it a monetary payment, a certain specific item for some individually named employees, or, as in the singular case of Caduceus Clay, an entire property. Caleb remembered the notes he had read of Lord Gustav, describing how he was individual and withdrawn but still pleasant. This seemed to fit with that.

He had also been more than generous with his sons. Caleb was unsure of how much the estate was worth, or of how much money Lord Gustav actually had in savings or in investments and holdings, but it seemed that he had attempted to be as fair as possible to both of his sons, gifting them amounts of roughly equal worth. It was a bit unusual to detail them as such in a will – from Caleb’s experience, more people preferred to simply state that their estate was to be divided between their children as their children saw fit – but Caleb assumed that Lord Gustav had his reasons. To all intents and purposes, all reports of him had painted him as a reasonable, rather sensible man. It was very possible that he knew his sons, and knew what each would prefer. Caleb had clearly not yet been through every letter and document, but between the letter from the Lords Pumat and the notes he had been provided, it seemed that Mollymauk spent more time at the manor than his brother, who seemed prone to frequent visits to other towns and cities for weeks at a time. There was little sense in giving a grand estate to someone who would rarely be around to appreciate it.

From one side of the room, from the direction of a shelf lined with tall, elegant silver candlesticks, Caleb heard the soft _thud_ of one falling over, followed by the clatter as it hit the floor. He sighed. “Frumpkin,” he called out, looking up from the will before him. “ _Schatz_ , what have I told you about…”

His words trailed off as he saw the scene before him. There was nothing truly unusual about it, not at first glance; one of the candlesticks that had previous rested on the shelf was now missing, tumbled to the floor beneath it. The other candlesticks appeared untouched, gleaming gently in the soft morning light. It was exactly the sort of arrangement that would tempt Frumpkin to jump up and walk along the shelf, nudging items out of the way as he pleased.

But there was no Frumpkin here to disturb them. Caleb had not seen him since breakfast, his cat having run off to explore the house further and, presumably, chase out what vermin were living inside the walls. There was no Frumpkin, and the candlesticks looked to be heavy metal, all of them several inches back from the edge of the shelf. There was no breeze that could have pushed them off. There was no curious, exploring cat who may have knocked them loose. A candlestick like the ones Caleb saw could not fall all on its own.

And yet, it seemed that one had.

Caleb felt the hairs on the back of his neck starting to prickle. The wind sighed again, and it may just have been his imagination but it felt colder this time, chillier and more distinct and as if it were somehow closer against his skin. He shivered, lifting a hand to rub at the back of his neck and, a moment later, felt the wind brush against the knuckles of that hand. And then again. And then again, slow and even and more regular than the wind itself could ever be. This didn’t feel like the wind, not anymore. This felt like someone breathing against his neck, every exhale as cold as death against his skin.

 _Mollymauk_ , Caleb’s mind whispered. He shivered once more, and felt something slender and cold brush against his leg beneath the table, twining around his ankle before vanishing to leave little more than goosebumps behind it. _It must be Mollymauk_.

Except, it couldn’t be. It _shouldn’t_ be. Mollymauk was dead, and ghosts were not, _could not,_ be real, but at the same time the wind did not breathe, and drafts did not slip beneath the hem of Caleb’s trousers to caress against his skin in a perfect, exact line, and candlesticks did not fall from high shelves on their own accord. None of this made sense. None of this could be real.

Against his neck, Caleb felt the cool brush of air again. Against his hands, he felt the breeze brush over his knuckles, as though stroking along his skin. He swallowed, shutting his eyes for a moment as he gathered his courage around his heart, and then, before he could talk himself out of it, he turned in his chair.

Before him, the open doorway into the hallway yawned wide and uninviting, and there was absolutely no one standing in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be posted on **August 12th!**


	5. Chapter 5

There was no one in the hallway beyond the door. There was no one in the room apart from Caleb himself. There was no flicker of movement, no indication of motion, no faint hint that there was a single other living being that had been here to open the door, and push the candlestick from its shelf, and breathe cool and calm and steady against Caleb’s neck as though it were reading over his shoulder. There was no one there at all.

Beyond the ticking of the grandfather clock on the floor above, the silence of the house was deafening. It swamped Caleb, drowned him, flooded into his throat and lungs until he felt to be choking on dust and age and the empty, hollow memories that reached to the very bones of the hill. He could hear his heartbeat, his own racing thoughts, but above it all he could hear the absolute, pure, entire absence of sound. It had been present since he woke, he knew it had been, but it was only now that he truly realised it. There were none of the sounds of rodents scurrying beneath the floorboards. There were no birds singing in the trees outside. There was no sound, no life, no _nothing_.

And then, with a soft creaking of hinges and a quiet sigh of wind, the door started to swing shut.

“Wait!” Caleb called out. The word left his mouth almost before he thought to say it, called out in some strange, desperate hope of hearing some other living person respond to his voice.

But, of course, no living person did. There was just a pause, the breeze briefly abating, and then the door slowly, quietly, creaked open again to reveal the same empty hallway as before. The breeze continued to rise and breathe, slipping through the papers that filled the room and stirring them gently, until the entire room was filled with the sound of rustling papers.

For a moment, in the whispering of the papers, Caleb thought he heard a single, drifting word.

“ _Caleb_ …”

It was barely a word, if he were honest; it was little more than a sigh of air, shaped into something that could just about resemble his name, but it was enough to run ice down his spine all the same. It was just structured enough that he could not tell if it came from the wind rustling through the papers, or from the mouth of some other being.

Caleb swallowed. On the back of his throat, he could taste dust and iron. “Who- who is there?”

The breeze stirred again, dancing along the edges of the room and playing with the stacked pages. _“Caleb…”_

“Who is here? Where are you?”

Caleb waited, his breath caught in his throat, but no response came. The draught seemed content to drift through the room, occasionally inspecting a sheet of paper or toying with the curtains, but the whisper-faint voice that it seemed to speak in didn’t make another appearance. Still, Caleb couldn’t stop himself from shivering. He’d heard a voice, he _knew_ he had, one too distinct and too clear to be coincidence. The first instance could have been coincidence, absolutely, and he knew that the second one could have been too, could have been the specific gusting of the wind under a door that happened to shape it exactly to his name, but the part of his mind that couldn’t excuse away his dreams likewise couldn’t excuse away this.

Something in this house, some _one_ , was speaking to him. Something here knew his name.

Caleb slowly pushed his chair back from the table, rising from his seat on shaky legs. He could feel his heart drumming in his chest like a bird trying to take flight, could hear the clatter of the candlestick hitting the ground playing over and over in his mind, could feel the hairs on the back of his neck prickling and the brush of the breeze against his skin and the horrible, shivery weight of unseen eyes watching him from somewhere that he could never reach. He needed to- he needed- he had to-

He needed to get out, right now. He didn’t know what was going on in this house, didn’t know if it was some elaborate prank the village folk were playing, or if it was something other and unnatural, or if it was just his mind deciding that he had worked hard enough for long enough and starting to gently turn in on itself as a result. For all he knew, it could be that. It could be his own brain that was failing him, making him see things that were not there and hear voices that could not possibly exist and forget his own actions, taking his normally perfect and exact memory and shredding it apart. Perhaps he had been the one to reorganise the papers after all. Perhaps he had been the one who, somehow, had knocked the candlestick off the shelf. It was far from an impossibility – Caleb knew that. He had interacted with enough grieving partners. He knew what loss and isolation could do to a person.

He shut his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, and, behind his closed lids, saw the face of a widowed husband he had once met who had insisted, with no trace of doubt, that his deceased partner still lived on in some plane between the mortal realm and the realm beyond. He had told Caleb that he would wake in the morning to find things moved, that he would zone out for moments and when he zoned back in would discover things broken or destroyed. And, despite the overwhelming evidence of his partner’s death, he had refused to let Caleb execute the will out of sheer insistence that his partner was, in some way, still present.

He had only accepted otherwise when Caleb had, with the man’s permission, asked someone to watch the house as he slept, and discovered the widowed husband himself sleepwalking throughout his home, moving items from place to place before returning to bed.

Brains, Caleb knew, could lie. Brains, he knew, could deceive. Brains could break, and shatter, and turn sharp and jagged and make you perceive a reality that did not exist.

He could only hope that that was not what his own brain was doing, but of the alternatives that remained, one was just as unpleasant. If he was not going mad, and if he was in fact perceiving the world exactly as it was, then that meant that either the village folk had, for some reason, decided that the best way to get him to leave was to give the impression that the house was haunted, or-

Caleb swallowed. The wind sighed quietly, a draught brushing over his arms once again. Ahead of him, the door into the hallway creaked once again.

Or, he thought to himself, if it was not the village folk, and it was not his own brain, then the only remaining explanation was that-

_No_. No. No, he wasn’t going to think about that. He wasn’t going to let himself think about that. Ghosts were not real, and they never had been, and there _would_ be an explanation for this. There had to be.

The wind sighed again, murmuring against the shell of his ear, and Caleb started towards the door.

He had every intention of walking calmly through the house, of keeping himself calm through calm thoughts and calm actions, but whatever plans he may have had fled the moment the door shut itself neatly behind him. The _click_ of the latch sounded unnaturally loud in the near-silence of the manor, echoing down the hallway like the strike of an executioner’s axe. It made Caleb flinch, and before he knew it he was starting to walk faster, brisker, his strides lengthening until he was only barely keeping himself from running. He hurried down the corridor and out into the entrance hall, unable to stop himself from glancing back over his shoulder with every other step. There were no shadows that he could see stretching out for him, no darkness gathering on the ceilings to seep down across the walls, but, right at the very edge of his hearing, there was still the whisper of the wind, rising and falling and sighing against his skin.

“ _Caleb_ ,” it murmured, his name a caress of air across the name of his neck. “ _Caleb_ …”

“Who’s there?” Caleb called out. He turned, eyes darting over every spiderweb-hung corner of the entrance hall, but all he saw was the remnant on long-dead arachnids. “Who is- who is talking to me?”

“ _Caleb_ …”

“ _Who are you?!_ ”

The wind – if it was the wind – gave no response, merely sighing quietly once more. Caleb swore to himself, the Zemnian rolling off his tongue as he crossed the open hall to the front door, looking constantly over his shoulder the whole while. There were no shadows wrapped around it this time, was no moonlight staining the floor in silver, but he still couldn’t help but think of his dream, and of how, in it, he had been chased away from the door, and not towards it. He couldn’t help but think of how, in his dream, he had seen Mollymauk standing directly behind him.

From the corner of one eye, Caleb thought he caught a glimpse of purple.

He turned, coming face to face with a large, rust-spotted mirror that hung on one side of the entrance hall. The glass was fogged with age and poor keeping, the silver backing stained and marked, but it was clear enough for Caleb to see himself, and the hall in which he stood. There was no indication of purple anywhere to be seen.

Caleb slowly, carefully, leaned in closer to the mirror. His reflection did the same, copying his every move as he inspected the reflection beyond the glass as best he could with his heart racing beneath his ribs. No purple. No tiefling.

No Mollymauk.

Caleb sighed. “You see?” he muttered to himself, standing up straight. “There is- there is nothing to be afraid of. There is no one here.” He took a step back from the mirror, unwilling to look away quite yet. “No one is here, Caleb.” Another step. “No one is-”

Caleb froze mid-word.

In one shadowed corner near the staircase, where dust and cobwebs gathered in the darkness, there stood the form of a purple tiefling, his eyes boring into Caleb’s through the glass of the mirror.

Caleb flinched back, nearly stumbling in his haste to get away from the mirror. Mollymauk – for it could only be Mollymauk – didn’t move, only turning his head slightly to track Caleb’s progress as he moved towards the door. He seemed impassive, almost sad in his expression, his brow furrowed and his eyebrows drawn together as he watched Caleb. He didn’t step out from the obscuring shadows that coiled around his feet, making no move to approach Caleb through the pane of glass, but Caleb was grateful for that. It was bad enough that he could see Mollymauk at all. He couldn’t imagine how he would react if Mollymauk were to move.

He kept walking backwards until he had no choice but to turn, but when he did he turned himself to face the corner where Mollymauk had stood. He could feel his heart in his throat, beating faster and faster, terrified of what he might see.

But there was no one there. There was no tiefling standing in the shadows.

“ _Scheiße,”_ Caleb muttered. He kept walking backwards, angling himself towards the front of the house, and only stopped when he felt the solid wood of the front door thud against his back. He reached behind himself blindly, never once looking away from the shadowed corner where Mollymauk had stood, and, by some blessing or miracle, managed to find the door handle. He turned it, barely hearing the sound of the latch over the thundering of his heart in his ears and, without hesitation, turned and yanked it open.

The door opened immediately before Caleb, letting him stumble his way outside. The sunlight, which had seemed so muted through the dusty glass windows of the manor, suddenly flooded his vision, making him blink in the unexpected brightness. It seemed that the clouds overhead had started to clear; the growing morning sunlight had burned away the majority of the mist that clung to the estate’s ancient, cracking stonework, leaving the gravel driveway just beyond the house’s front door entirely clear to see. The trees that enveloped the hill stood tall and silent, unspeaking sentinels to guard the house, but despite the breeze in the air and the hours that had now passed since sunrise, it appeared that the mist in the lane remained as thick and as heavy as ever.

Caleb could see it from where he stood. The gates to the estate hung open, inviting him out into the waking, living world that waited for him just beyond their skeletal cast-iron bars. In the winter sunlight the metal gleamed weak and sullen, shining dull silver and muted grey and occasionally showing orange-red where the rust had started to take hold of it, the gates clearly affected by the same slow, creeping decay that held the rest of the house in its hands.

And, just beyond the gates, the mist waited.

It lay in drifting, patient tendrils barely a few yards away from where the gates hung open, coiling and shifting with every faint breath of wind but never quite dispersing entirely. It gathered thickly in the trees that lined the drive, clinging to trunks and branches alike, but Caleb could only make out that particular detail for a few more yards before the entire drive was swallowed up in soft, pale grey. The trees vanished. The cobbles, which he could just about distinguish if he strained his eyes, melted and blurred together into nothingness. There was no indication of ground, or sky, or tree or man or being or _anything_. There was just the mist, moving and breathing like some impossible living thing.

For a moment, Caleb thought he could make out the shape of a face in the mist. It stared at him impassively, formed of barely-there shadows and the occasional glint of light, but a moment later the wind stirred the mist once more, and the ghostly visage was wiped away.

“You are going crazy,” Caleb muttered to himself. He lifted his hands, rubbing them against his arms, and gave his head a brief shake, as if trying to clear the unpleasant thoughts from it like so much dust. “You are going crazy, Widogast.” There was no face in the mist. There was no tiefling in the house. The nearest living being, outside of Frumpkin and whatever insects and animals still dwelled in and around the hill, was Caduceus, all the way down at the bottom of the hill, and he was not supposed to be at the house for another few hours.

But Caleb could not wait that long. Even if what he saw was just in his head, even if he truly was going as mad as he thought he might be, the presence of another person, even one who believed in ghosts and the supernatural, would be a more than welcome aid. There were no people up here, though, and he knew that. If he wanted companionship in this time, he would have to make his own way down the hill.

Caleb raised his head, looking out towards the gates. The wind which had murmured his name over and over again the house was even more active outside, tugging on the barren branches of the skeletal trees and inciting them into some lacklustre, macabre dance, but, out on the road, the mist hung heavy and still. It looked unnatural to Caleb, too heavy and too dense and too thick to exist when all the world around it was being brightened and gradually warmed by sunlight, but he knew that was just in his head. It was just mist. Mist had never hurt anyone. Mist was all that stood between him and Caduceus Clay.

Caleb stepped down off the flight of steps that led up to the grand front door of the manor, and set off across the drive.

In the absolute silence that encompassed the hill, Caleb’s footsteps sounded unnaturally loud as he crossed the gravel. The small stones crunched beneath his feet, signalling his approach to what creatures or beings still dwelled up here, so far from any indication of life or comfort. Even the faint whisperings of the wind through the branches of the trees failed to disturb the still, unmoving air, and when Caleb stopped just past the open barrier of the gates, right where the gravel of the drive gave way to the cobbles of the road, there was no sound at all. The mist seemed to absorb it, consume it, swallow it whole and leave only the purest silence in its wake, in a manner that was all too similar to Caleb’s dreams to be in any way pleasant. He had always been fond of quiet places, being a regular visitor to Rexxentrum’s libraries, but this was beyond that. This was not the silence of people gathered together, maintaining the peace and quiet in their own, living way. This was the silence of an abandoned grave, absolute and unbreakable.

Ahead of him, the mist writhed gently. Caleb couldn’t help but draw a parallel between the mist here and the shadows of his dream and how they had stretched out to meet him, but unlike the shadows, the mist seemed entirely unconcerned with his presence. Had he been in a more comfortable headspace, Caleb would have scoffed at the thought. Of course the mist was unconcerned – it was _mist_ , nothing else. It had no thoughts, or opinions, and it could do nothing except exist until the sunlight burned it away. It had no sentience.

But, all the same, he could not forget Caduceus’ words. All the same, he could not forget his own experiences in the house. Shadows should not be able to reach for him, and yet they had. A freshly-wound clock should not be able to stop ticking after barely a few hours, and yet it had.

Dead tieflings should not be able to caress his cheek, and whisper warnings to him, and touch blood to his skin, and yet one had. And yet, Mollymauk Tealeaf had made a home for himself within Caleb’s dreams, and Caleb was seemingly powerless to stop him.

Mist was nothing more than water vapour. It was nothing more than the same liquid that made up clouds, and rain, and snow. There was nothing special or strange or unnatural about it, not even slightly. _This is only mist_ , Caleb told himself. _Mist cannot harm you_. He lifted one foot, taking another step further away from the gates. Overhead the wind stirred softly, bowing the branches of the trees as though they were reaching out for him. _It is only mist_. Another step. _It is only mist,_ he told himself one last time, and, with that thought in mind, he stepped out onto the road.

If Caleb had thought the estate was silent before, that was nothing compared to now. Every single tiny sound faded, muffled and made silent by the mist that embraced him. He could hear his own footsteps over the cobbles, but they were faint, only barely existing at the very edge of his hearing. If he didn’t strain for them, he couldn’t hear them at all.

It hadn’t been like this the last time he had been on the road, he realised. He forced himself to take another step, and then another, stirring his limbs into motion as he started down the hill. The previous night, when he had been in the cart with Caduceus, he had been able to hear every sound perfectly clearly; he’d heard the wheels clattering over the cobbles, the soft huffing sigh of the horse’s breath, the gentle creak of wood and leather as the cart made its way up the hill. He’d heard his voice, and Caduceus’ voice, and the owls hooting in the trees at the base of the hill.

There were no owls now. There was no Caduceus now.

Caleb took another step. Beneath his feet, the road was as silent as the grave. He took another, feeling the cobbles beneath his feet but not hearing them. They were a little bit slick, made damp by the moisture that hung in the air and now clung to Caleb’s skin, but it was manageable. He took another step, and then another, and slowly, carefully, made his way down the hill.

Behind him, the mist closed over itself like a veil.

Caleb made sure to keep the high side of the hill on his left as he followed the road, occasionally reaching out to brush his fingertips over one of the trunks of the trees. Why he did this he wasn’t entirely sure but it felt necessary, as if he was reassuring himself that what he was seeing and experiencing was reality, and not some vision that his mind had dreamed up. The trees were rough beneath his fingertips, just as they should be, but the knowledge didn’t reassure him as much as he thought it would. In his dream, the house had seemed entirely real. In his dream, Mollymauk Tealeaf had been close enough to touch.

“Do not do this,” Caleb muttered to himself. He shut his eyes for a moment, pausing by the side of the road. He knew what was real. He had to know what was real. He was real, and his cat was real, and this job which he needed to pay his bills was real, and the ghost of Mollymauk Tealeaf was not. Ghosts were not real. Mist could not harm him. The breeze was not speaking his name, and shadows were not stretching for him, and there was no blood on his face.

There was no blood on his face.

With a hand that very definitely didn’t shake, Caleb gently touched his cheek, opening his eyes only to inspect his fingers. As he had suspected, there was nothing on them. _There is nothing here_. “ _Gut_ ,” he muttered to himself. He took a breath, and then another one. “ _Gut_. _Alles ist gut_.” He took a few more long, death-silent moments to gather himself and then, feeling marginally calmer, he gave a small nod to himself, and continued walking.

From out of the mist, someone knocked into him.

Caleb turned, flinching away as the dark form hurried off into the mist, quickly vanishing into the thick greyness that surrounded and consumed everything. “ _Hallo?”_ he called out. He stepped out towards the centre of the road, turning to look in the direction that the figure had gone. “Who is there?”

There was no response. There was no sound. The figure had vanished as quickly as it had appeared, melting into obscurity as though it had been no more than a figment of Caleb’s imagination. Caleb took another step out into the mist, no longer able to see the trees that lined either side of the road. That was alright, though. He knew where they were. They were right behind him. He just had to turn, and walk two steps, and he would find the trees again and be able to resume his journey.

For a few long, silent moments, Caleb waited in the mist. He had no idea how long he stood there for, feeling the mist slipping beneath the collar of his shirt and wrapping around his hands like so many ethereal, seeking fingers, but it could not have been longer than five minutes. He just wanted to - _needed_ to - see any indication of life, of another person, of a world outside this impossible, endless road.

But he saw nothing. He heard nothing. And, after an immeasurable period of time, he turned, and walked back to where the side of the road should have been.

Ahead of him, the mist only revealed yet more of the road.

Caleb froze, blinking. The trees were supposed to be here. They _had_ to be here. He knew exactly where they were, how far he had walked, and yet, where there should be the sharp slope of the hill, and ancient, mist-dampened tree trunks, there was nothing but swirling fog, and the cobblestones marching away underfoot. “No,” Caleb whispered to himself. He took another step, reaching out for trees that had to be there. “No, no, no-”

From out of the mist, he heard the now-familiar whisper of his name.

Caleb froze. He was imagining things; there was no other explanation. There wasn’t any wind here that could have given the faintest impression of his name, was no breeze to slip through the treetops and bend it’s voice to some approximation of language. There was only him, and the mist.

And, part of him thought quietly, there was the tiefling he had seen in the mirror.

“Mollymauk?” Caleb asked, his voice uncertain and quiet. He swallowed, licking his lips, and called again, louder this time. “Mollymauk!” He turned in place, searching desperately for any sign of life, any indication of another living being or of the right direction to go, but he saw nothing but yet more mist. “Mollymauk Tealeaf!”

Gods, what was he doing? He was shouting to a dead man while standing on a direct road, for no other reason than because the mist had played with his eyesight and sense of direction and he could no longer tell if the road ahead of him led up or down the hill. At this point, it didn’t even matter which way the road before him led – if he would just follow it, he would inevitably end up _somewhere_ , be it the top of the hill or the bottom. Either way, he’d be out of the mist. Mollymauk, he was sure, had nothing to do with this. Mollymauk was dead.

Caleb took a breath, feeling the chill of the mist settling deep in his lungs. “Mollymauk!” he called out again. The word vanished into the mist, consumed by the fog swirling around him. “ _Wo sind Sie_?”

There was no response. Of course there was no response. There was no one here but himself, and the mist, and whoever it was who had bumped into him, but with every passing second Caleb found himself feeling less and less sure about that single, fleeting moment of contact. It had felt solid, yes, but there had been something off about it, as if the form that had bumped into him hadn’t been entirely… real.

As if it hadn’t been entirely of this world.

Caleb stumbled backwards through the mist, feeling it curling over his shoulders and down across his chest, exerting no pressure save for the chilly touch that it pressed against his skin. “Mollymauk!” he tried to say again, but the word died on his tongue, escaping him as barely more than a whisper. “Mollymauk…” He took another step back, the mist parting around him with a sigh. There was no one here. There was no one to speak to him. There was no ghost, and there was no Mollymauk, and there was no one and nothing and the trees should have been there and yet they weren’t, and the mist should be clearing beneath the sunlight and yet it wasn’t, and the road should by all rights be leading him _somewhere_ but he could see no end, could see nothing at all, could see nothing but mist and fog and the drifting, half-formed visions of faces that his mind was desperately putting together in an attempt to give him something to focus on and-

Something – some _one_ – thudded into his back. Caleb turned, terror turning his breath to icicles in his lungs, and saw before him the tall, slender shape of a familiar firbolg.

Caduceus Clay frowned.

“Mr Widogast?” he asked, sounding confused.

Almost instantly, Caleb felt half the tension leave his body. He sagged in place slightly, his breath leaving him in a sigh at the sight of another living being. _Thank the gods_. Thank the gods that it was not just him anymore, alone and abandoned and isolated in the mist, with no indication of where he was or where he was going. Thank the gods that there was someone else, and thank them that it was Caduceus, the only person in the entire village who seemed willing to travel the hill.

“Caduceus,” Caleb said. He could hear the lingering fear in his voice, could hear how the word shook, and he didn’t care. There was someone else with him now. He was no longer alone. “Caduceus, I am- I am greatly relieved to see you.”

“Did you try to make your own way down the hill?” Caduceus asked, still frowning. His ears were twitching, Caleb noticed, flicking back and forth in little, uncertain movements.

Caleb nodded. “ _Ja_ ,” he confirmed. “I was, ah…” He trailed off, not wanting to describe the fear and panic that had been coursing through his veins when he first left the house. Caduceus did not need to know that. Caduceus did not need to know the state that his mind was in. “I thought that I could make my way to town a little bit early today, visit the village archives, fetch some supplies for the house, all of that.” He gestured vaguely at the sky, not bothering to look up. “And it is a nice day, so I thought that a walk- that a walk could perhaps be nice. Although,” he added, swallowing to wet his dry throat, “I may, ah, I might need a lift back up the hill. When I return from the village. If you would be amenable to that.”

Caduceus’ frown only deepened. “Back _up_ the hill?”

“Mhmm, _ja_.”

“… Mr Widogast, we’re still at the top of it. There’s no more up to go.”

That couldn’t be right. It _couldn’t_ be. Caleb had no idea how long he had been walking for, his normally perfect sense of time entirely thrown off-balance by the mist, but it had been for at least a few minutes, and at no point had he fully, intentionally turned around. He’d been so careful to keep the high side of the hill on the same side for the entire journey. He should, by all rights, be at the bottom of the hill. He had to be. That was what reality said had to happen.

Caleb turned, and felt his weak, feeble confidence wither and die at the sight before him.

Caduceus was right – they were both stood just outside the open gates leading into the manor’s gravel drive, the house itself visible beyond them. It looked just how it had when Caleb had left it, silent and dark and as still as the grave, but, somehow, that was worse. It would have been better if the house was different. It would have been better if _anything_ was different. If would have been better if there was any indication at all that Caleb had ever even tried to leave the house behind him, but there was no indication to speak of. There was no sign. There was no difference. There was only the house, waiting in silence at the top of the hill.

Caleb _had_ followed the path of the road – he was _sure_ of it. He had kept on walking down the hill as best he could, even when the mist confused him and the trees reached for him and the figures he glimpsed hurrying through the mist distracted and swayed him from his path. He _had_ walked down the hill. He had passed through the gates, and stepped into the mist, and by all rights he should have stepped out by Caduceus’ house at the other end. By all rights, he should have left the house far, far behind him.

Caleb swallowed. “I-” he said, feeling the word catch and die in his throat. “But- _aber- Ich-_ ”

“You tried to go down the hill, didn’t you?”

Caleb nodded mutely.

Caduceus sighed, reaching out to gently clap Caleb on the shoulder. Caleb didn’t look at him, unable to tear his gaze from the house until Caduceus shook his shoulder, jostling him out of his stunned stillness. “Hey,” Caduceus said quietly. “ _Hey_. Caleb. Come on, now, look at me.” Slowly, Caleb did. Caduceus smiled. “There you go. Now, just tell me simply: did you go into the mist?”

Caleb nodded again.

“Alright, okay. You seem like a smart man, so I’m going to work on the assumption that you did it intentionally, but I’m also aware that you don’t exactly seem to entirely believe some of the things that are going on here, so I’m not going to blame you too much for ignoring what I told you. You do remember what I told you when you first came here, right?”

Caleb hummed quietly. “Mm, _ja_. You said that you found it was best to take a cart to the top of the hill. You said that- you said that only someone being paid to go up to the house would actually do it.”

“Yeah, I did say that. And you remember what I said yesterday?”

Caleb did. Caleb absolutely, entirely did. The words hadn’t made sense at the time, and they still didn’t make sense now, not really, but, somehow, he felt that he understood them better. Now, he had experienced them for himself. “You said,” he said slowly, feeling the words out, “you that the mist and the trees do not always like letting people through. You said that they would get them lost. You said that…” He trailed off, not wanting to finish his sentence.

Caduceus smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile. At the very most, it could be described as understanding. “I said,” he continued for Caleb, “that most people come back. And I also said that some don’t. I wasn’t lying to you, Mr Widogast. The mist here is probably a little bit different to what you’re accustomed to. It doesn’t mean you any harm, though. It’s just… protective.”

“Protective? Of what?”

Caduceus shrugged, nodding vaguely in the direction of the manor. “The house. The hill. It seems content enough to allow me through, but only really when I’m on the cart. I think it might recognise that it’s me when I’m on the cart; I need it to carry up all my gardening supplies. Not all the plants here are so happy about me tending them, but most seem pretty content. I look after those ones as best I can, and the ones that the hill doesn’t want me tending to… well, those ones I tend to leave alone. It’s not worth the scratches.”

“Which plants- which of them do not like you tending to them?” Caleb asked. He didn’t like that he was asking that question. He didn’t like that he was starting to acknowledge this ridiculous, impossible world of protective mist, and discontent plants, and ghosts that dwelled in the bones of Tealeaf Hill, but he couldn’t help it. He still didn’t believe everything, not truly, not entirely, but he could no longer deny his dreams, or the footprints in the dust, or the flickers of purple that he saw in mirrors.

Caleb shivered, feeling the mist pressing closer against the back of his neck, brushing cool and damp against his skin. It seemed to slip beneath his collar, running down his back and along his arm before coiling in the palm of his hand, weaving itself between his fingers as if it were trying to hold onto him. Caleb didn’t understand this world. He didn’t understand how these things could come to be. He didn’t understand what was happening.

But it _was_ happening, and, now, he had to accept that. Now, he had to learn how to handle it.

For a moment, Caduceus didn’t reply. He looked at Caleb with a peculiar expression that Caleb couldn’t place, tapping his fingers gently against the handle of his spade. The sound of his nails drumming against the wood seemed uncomfortably loud in the strange, still silence that the hill seemed to gather around itself, but barely a couple of seconds passed before Caduceus abruptly ceased the action. Caleb looked up, frowning slightly, and saw that Caduceus’ gaze had shifted, no longer focused on himself but instead on something just over his right shoulder.

“Yeah…” Caduceus said slowly, and Caleb didn’t know why, but he got the impression that, in that moment, Caduceus was not talking to him. “Yeah, you know what… I’ll do that…” He trailed off, absently tapping his thumb against the spade handle once, then twice, and then looked back at Caleb. “Mr Caleb?”

“… _Ja_.”

“Take a walk with me, would you?”

Caleb nodded slowly, unsure of what Caduceus had seen behind him but unwilling to look. He could still feel the mist coiling around his arm and brushing against the back of his neck, and anything that would take him further away from the strange, unsettling fog that clung to the road would be greatly appreciated.

Caduceus smiled at him. “Good,” he said. “Come on then, Mr Widogast. It isn’t far.” With that he turned and, pausing only to gently pat his horse’s flank, walked through the gates and up the drive towards the house.

As Caduceus promised, the journey wasn’t a long one. Caleb followed him towards the house, but instead of approaching the front door Caduceus turned slightly, skirting around the house towards the back of the property and then crossing the grounds behind it towards the small cemetery that lay attached to them. Caleb had caught glimpses of the family cemetery from the windows of the house a few times, but he had never made his way out to it. Up until now, it had never seemed worth the trip. It lay at the back of the manor, past the once-beautiful gardens that had now turned dull and grey with the onset of winter. They were still neat, were still orderly thanks to the dutiful work of Caduceus, but there was little colour to them, now. There were no flowers.

Just like with the rest of the estate, there was no life to be found.

The wind whistled through the branches of the trees as Caleb followed Caduceus further through the garden, feeling his discomfort grow as they approached the cemetery itself. He felt odd, unsettled and out of place and unwelcome, for all that he had every right to be here, at the estate. The cemetery was not his space, and he had no cause to visit it. This was not his parents’ graves, visited every year to pay his respects and remember their life. There was nothing here that he had any specific attachment to and, as much as he appreciated the absolute silence that graveyards held, he did not wish to tread where he would not be welcome. He was not a friend of the family. He was not a relation. He was an executor, an employee. His job was not to mourn, but to carry out the wishes of the deceased. The graveyard held nothing for him.

And, Caleb realised as they approached it, it seemed that it held nothing for Caduceus, either. The cemetery was just down the hill from the garden, separated by a short path of flat stones now half-overgrown with weeds which, for some reason, Caduceus had chosen not to uproot from the ground, and with every step they took towards it, the plant life around it became wilder and wilder. Caleb could see barren stems of winter ivy crawling over the iron bars of the fence that enclosed it, could see lichen and moss clinging to the headstones. It looked more abandoned and overgrown than the few years that the house had been empty for seemed to warrant – it looked _old_ , as if it had been left to gently fade away over at least a decade. It looked forgotten. 

It looked like it wanted to stay that way.

Caduceus stopped a few yards out from the entrance the cemetery, his path blocked by a snarled tangle of thorns. He nodded towards them. “You see, Mr Caleb,” he said, “the cemetery plants aren’t quite so fond of me. I can handle everything around the house just fine – the worst I have to deal with there is some mint which is really being a very unpleasant bully – and I know all my tricks and skills, but the cemetery… it’s a bit out of step with nature, I’d say.”

Caleb nodded minutely, tucking his hands under his arms as he tried not to shiver. It wasn’t just the sight of the abandoned, overgrown cemetery that set him on edge – he could still feel phantom impressions of the mist crawling over his skin, sighing against his neck and caressing his cheek with unreal, dreamlike touches. He swallowed. “Out- out of step with nature?” he asked. He could hear the slight waver in his own voice, the way the words shook and trembled. “That is- what do you mean by that, Mr Clay?”

“Oh, well, you know…” the groundskeeper replied, giving a shrug. He lifted his spade, nudging it gently against a twisted strand of bramble that snaked across the stones towards them. “Normally, you can trim this stuff back. It can be a bit unpleasant, especially if you don’t have gloves or the right tools for the job, but it can be done. You trim it, uproot it if you really want to, and then it’s out of the way. It doesn’t grow awfully fast, so even now that it’s just me working the grounds, I can normally keep it in check. Just takes dedication. But this guy, right here…” He nudged the bramble again. “I can cut it, sure. I can trim it. I even spent an entire day in spring uprooting as much of it as I could get my hands on. I know no one’s been here for a few years, but it never hurts to keep the place looking tidy. I was wondering if it would make Master Mollymauk any happier, if his final resting place was a bit more organised and pleasant, but a few days later I was back, and it had all grown in again. Thicker, too. Tougher. It didn't seem to want me to reach his grave.”

“How long- how long does it normally take for brambles such as these to grow?”

Caduceus gave a short chuckle, seeming almost amused with Caleb’s question. “Oh, much longer than that, Mr Widogast. Much longer. Brambles like to take their time, I find. They’re not normally quite so… let’s call them ‘hasty’. It seemed to me like they were very enthusiastic to get back to work protecting the grave.”

Despite the sunlight, Caleb shivered. “ _J-ja_?” he asked, though he wanted and expected no answer. “Do you know what could make them do that?” _Something natural_ , he thought desperately, but there was little hope to that wish. _Something rational_.

“I haven’t the foggiest,” Caduceus replied cheerfully. “Maybe Master Mollymauk is scared of something and is trying to keep his body safe. Maybe Lord Gustav actually is still about, and wants to protect his son. I don’t think that one’s quite as likely – I’ve never seen Lord Gustav here, after all – but it’s definitely plausible. I’d need someone else to ask them for me, though. I’ve done what I can talking to the brambles, but I don’t quite have the right skills to ask Master Mollymauk myself. Pity, that.”

Caleb went to speak and then immediately paused, taking a moment to process Caduceus’ words. “You- _was_?”

“You know,” Caduceus continued, as if he hadn’t heard Caleb at all, “there’s a young lady in town who I think you may like to talk to. She’s another tiefling, actually – showed up here shortly after Master Mollymauk passed on. She might be able to help you if the mist and the house are starting to take an interest in you.”

_Not starting to_ , Caleb thought. _They have_. He frowned. “ _Ja?_ Who?”

“A Miss Jester Lavorre. She has a little tailoring shop down in the village.”

“Oh!” Caleb exclaimed. “I have- I have already met her, actually.”

“Really? That’s nice. That makes things a little bit easier, actually. She can be a little, ah, overwhelming when you first meet her, but she’s very lovely, and I think that she might be able to help you.” Caduceus paused, nodding towards Mollymauk’s grave before gesturing back over his shoulder towards the house. “With, you know… all of this. Master Mollymauk seems to be pretty active, more so than is usual for him, and you, unfortunately, seem to be receiving the brunt of it. I’m sure Miss Jester could help you, though.”

“How?” Caleb asked immediately. He couldn’t imagine how any one person could help him with this. He couldn’t imagine what ‘this’ even was. And he had, as he had mentioned, met Jester, twice now – she seemed sweet enough, kind and bubbly and friendly, but Caleb couldn’t imagine her being of any use at the house, where normality held no sway and the dead rose to observe the living. “How could she possibly help with this, Mr Clay?”

There was another short pause. When Caduceus replied, his voice was entirely calm and level. “Well, he said, “for starters, Miss Jester will be able to speak with him.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you've been enjoying the story so far! If you've got any theories about what you think might be going on, please do post them in a comment! I'd love to see what you guys are thinking ^-^
> 
> The beautiful art in this chapter was done by [fswrites](https://twitter.com/fswrites)! The next chapter will be posted on **August 21st!**


	6. Chapter 6

The way Caduceus explained it, as he led Caleb back over to his cart and started unloading his gardening supplies, was thusly: while the vast majority of people in the village had a belief in the supernatural, be that due to having glimpsed the ghost of Mollymauk themselves or some other reason, Jester Lavorre was one of the few who _acted_ on that belief. There were plenty who believed in ‘small magic’, as Caduceus called it, like carrying a small piece of oak bark to ward off bad luck, or keeping dried thistles above doorways to keep ghosts at bay, but those were all preventative measures. They were, in his words, passive. They didn’t seek to engage with the supernatural, but instead aimed to keep it all safely at bay, letting them go about their lives in peace.

Jester was one of the few, if not the only one, who actively reached out. She was, Caduceus told Caleb while going about his winter gardening duties, actively interested in the supernatural, and though she seemed to have a healthy respect for it, and worried for other people who dabbled in it or brushed up alongside it, she was not afraid of it for herself.

“She’s prepared, you see,” Caduceus said, leading the way back to the cart with Caleb trailing after him. “She’s got all the supplies, and has done her reading, and all of that. Now, if I’m honest, I’ve not spoken to Miss Jester a great deal, but we’ve traded words a few times and she only seems worried for people who don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to ghosts.”

Caleb nodded, watching Caduceus load his supplies back into the cart. “That would explain why she told me not to go up to the house,” he mumbled, tucking his hands under his arms to ward off the damp chill in the air. “And why she was asking me how it was.”

“Yeah. Miss Jester doesn’t go up to the house either, to be fair – up until you, no one really did apart from myself, and the others who tried, well… you saw what the mist was like.”

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb muttered. “ _Ich_ \- I did, yes.” He could see it now, swirling gently just beyond the gates. Occasionally it stirred, buffeted gently by a flick of the horse’s tail, but mostly it just lay thick and heavy and absolutely, entirely silent. Caleb shivered. He didn’t want to step foot in the mist again. He didn’t want to leave the house again, and he didn’t want to stay here for any longer than he had to, and he didn’t want to leave without finding out what happened to Mollymauk.

Beside him, he heard the soft clattering of Caduceus loading the rest of his gardening supplies into the back of the cart, the noise occasionally broken up by the firbolg’s quiet, soft humming. In the silence of the top of the hill the sound of his humming was unexpectedly gentle and welcome, filling the air with something akin to life. For a brief, fleeting moment, the estate very nearly felt lived in again.

And then Caduceus stopped humming, and climbed up onto the driver’s seat of the cart, and in the absence of his voice the silence rang like the hall of an abandoned cathedral.

“Alright,” Caduceus said, flicking the reins gently to get the horse’s attention. “Climb on up, Mr Caleb. I can give you a lift to Miss Jester’s shop, if you’d like.”

“Are- are you sure?” Caleb heard himself asking.

“I’m sure,” Caduceus assured him, giving him a small smile. “I need to pick up some things from the village anyway. It won’t be a problem for me to drive you there. And besides, you won’t be able to make it through the mist without me, you know.”

Caleb shivered. “ _Ja_ ,” he muttered. “ _Ja_ , I know.” He gave the mist one last long, doubtful look. It looked, just how it had earlier, entirely innocuous. It looked, just like how everything else on Tealeaf Hill did, entirely normal.

Except, as Caleb knew now, it seemed that nothing on this estate was normal. The mist was not normal, and the shadows were not normal, and not even the plants seemed to care much for the rules of nature that so usually bound them. Everything here was just slightly out of step, slightly off-balance, and it chilled him down to his bones.

“Actually,” he said slowly, as another thought started to make itself known to him, “if it is alright, Mr Clay, I may just- could you please excuse me, just for one moment? I need to fetch my coat and briefcase.”

Caduceus gave a short, understanding nod. “Ah, yeah, of course. You go and do that, Mr Widogast. I’ll turn the cart around.”

Caleb wasted no time fetching his briefcase from the dining room. He walked away from the mist as briskly as he could, swinging the front door of the manor house open and hurrying inside and across the entrance hall. He kept his gaze fixed firmly on the tiled floor beneath his feet as he crossed the room, watching the black and white tiles give way to the dusty carpet of the hallway, and even when he was in the dining room he refused to look up. He didn’t want to know what he would see looking back at him from the mirror above the fireplace. He didn’t want to know if Mollymauk was still watching him.

With careful, shaking hands, he scooped the paperwork he thought he might need into his briefcase, shutting it with a sharp _click_ , and then briefly retreated upstairs to obtain his coat and scarf. It was a chilly day outside, the winter weather truly starting to make itself known, and Caleb felt cold down to his marrow from the mist and the silence and Caduceus’ slow, careful, certain words. It had only been curiosity and a desperate need to be around some other living being that had kept him out in the cold for so long – already his fingers were a little numb, his skin prickling all over with goosebumps, but with his coat around his shoulders and his scarf around his neck he felt a little better.

Even then, he decidedly didn’t look in any of the house’s many mirrors when he left, and he didn’t look behind him at all when shutting the front door and locking it up tight.

“Have you got everything you need?” Caduceus asked as Caleb climbed up into the cart, now turned around and facing back down the road up to the house.

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb confirmed, setting his briefcase down by his legs.

“Good. Because if you’ve forgotten anything, you’ll have to wait until later to pick it up.”

Caleb gave a short, humourless laugh, swaying in his seat as Caduceus stirred the horse into action, making the cart lurch forwards. “Honestly, at this point I am quite alright with waiting for a while before returning to the house.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm, _ja_. It has, ah… this house has been a very new experience for me, and I am not quite sure how to feel about it.” It was an understatement, and Caleb knew it, but he didn’t say any more. He couldn’t. Everything was still too strange, was still too unusual. He didn’t have the words to describe what had happened to him, what _was_ happening to him. He didn’t have the words to tell Caduceus how relieved he was to leave the house behind him, if only for a day.

He didn’t have the words to tell Caduceus how, beneath the fear, and terror, and bone-deep dread that the house instilled in him, he was so absolutely, unspeakably curious.

Caduceus didn’t respond to his statement, merely giving a soft, thoughtful hum as they started to descend the hill, letting the conversation between them lapse into a soft silence. The mist on the hill parted easily before them, muffling the steady clopping of the horse’s hooves and the gentle rattle of the wheels but not silencing them entirely, letting the sounds hang in the air around them. It seemed lighter, almost, as though between Caleb’s journey through it earlier and now it had somehow become significantly less dense. When he had been walking in it he had barely been able to see his hand in front of his face, but now he could easily see a good few yards down the road before them. He could see the cobbles of the road, and the horse’s ears swishing back and forth, and he could see the sunlight illuminating the trees around them, shining off bone-white branches and casting faint shadows against the fog. It was almost pleasant to look at and, had he not attempted to cross the mist himself earlier, Caleb felt he almost would have enjoyed the strange, almost dream-like view. There was a strange peace to the mist, for all that he could still feel his skin prickling into goosebumps at the touch of it against his neck. It was as though, while they were passing through it, the entire world was holding its breath.

“You have seen Master Mollymauk, haven’t you?” Caduceus asked unexpectedly, his voice breaking the silence enveloping them. Caleb blinked, momentarily caught off-guard, and was just about to answer before he managed to catch himself. He could feel his answer waiting, lingering at the back of his throat, but it wasn’t what he wanted to say. It wasn’t what he wanted to believe.

He wanted to say no. He wanted to tell Caduceus that he had never seen Mollymauk, and that any instances where he may have _thought_ that he had seen Mollymauk were merely the results of tired eyes and an exhausted, stressed brain, or the product of some lingering madness, or the results of the village folk attempting to get him to leave, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Not anymore, and not now, with the cart only just exiting the mist that Caleb had become so lost in.

He had seen Mollymauk. He knew that now. He had seen Mollymauk, and heard his voice, and felt his touch, and whether those were dreams or visions or somewhere in-between Caleb wasn’t sure, but they had happened. They had happened to him.

He swallowed, looking out over the side of the cart and towards the gradually flattening countryside, giving a small, jerky nod. “Yes,” he murmured. “I have- I have seen him. Um. More than once.”

“Oh?”

“ _Ja_.”

“Huh,” Caduceus said, sounding almost impressed. “That’s… well, I’ll be honest with you, Mr Caleb. Most people don’t see Master Mollymauk at all, of course – he tends to keep to himself, from what I’ve seen, which must be terribly lonely seeing how, ah, active he was in life – but to see him multiple times in a couple of days, well, that’s…” Caduceus trailed off, shaking his head slightly.

Caleb frowned. He didn’t like it when Caduceus said things like that and then fell silent. He could feel his anxiety brewing, gathering close and cold and sharp in the pit of his stomach. “It’s what?”

Caduceus shrugged. “It’s a little unusual,” he said simply, as if that was explanation enough. “Took me a good couple of months after his passing to see him at all, and even now it’s rare for me to spot him more than once every few months. Of course, I don’t actually step foot inside the house like you have been, but I’ve dropped in a few times to fill the watering can in summer when the rainwater barrel has run dry. I’ve never seen him inside, though.”

“No? Where have you seen him?”

“Oh, just through the windows,” Caduceus replied calmly. “Normally up one floor, in his bedroom window.”

Caleb looked away, feeling something cold run down his spine. He hadn’t seen Molly through the windows, not how Caduceus had, but he’d seen Mollymauk on the landing of the first floor. He’d seen him there several times. “Which, um, which window would that be? That you have seen him in?” _Which room?_ he wanted to ask. _Which room does Mollymauk like to haunt?_

_Which room did Mollymauk used to sleep in?_

“Well, it’s a little hard to describe from the outside, isn’t it?” Caduceus replied, giving a little chuckle. “I mean, I know exactly which window it is – it’s the third to the right of the chipped corner block – but from the inside… ah, I’m not sure. One of the bedrooms, though. His bedroom, I think. That would make the most sense.”

“And do you- do you know which bedroom that is? In the house?”

Caduceus gave a small hum, taking one hand briefly of the reins to scratch at the tuft on pink hair on his chin. “Well…” he said slowly, “I suppose… yeah, that’s probably it. It’d be the one… you know the staircase in the house? The big one?”

“ _Ja_.” Very well. Too well.

“Well, if you picture yourself at the top of that, and then you turn yourself left, I think Master Mollymauk’s room would be the first door on the right. That seems about right.”

“…The first on the right? Are you sure of that?”

“As sure as I am of anything,” Caduceus replied calmly. “Have you looked in there yet? I never saw Master Mollymauk’s room, but he had a very… let’s call it _distinctive_ style of dress. Master Lucien used to complain to me sometimes that Master Mollymauk’s style was apparently reflected in his room.”

“Distinctive?” Caleb heard himself asking. “How so?”

Caduceus shrugged. “Ah, well, that’s hard to describe… he liked bright colours, bold patterns, all that sort of thing, you know? Master Lucien used to say his twin took after his father even more than his father did, whatever that meant. Something about Lord Gustav’s previous years with the carnival.”

Caleb frowned, absently tapping his fingers against his legs. He didn’t like this conversation, not when he knew so very well just what, exactly, Mollymauk’s style was. He’d seen it more than once now, in paintings and in person, or as in person as dreams and visions could be. He remembered the peacock embroidered on Mollymauk’s waistcoat, matched by one tattooed onto the smooth skin of his cheek. He remembered the peacock feathers in the bedroom. He remembered the now-faded silks, the hanging tapestries, the general impression of barely restrained ostentatious splendour. He’d only really picked that room due to it being the first bedroom he’d stepped foot in, not having the energy to spend time looking for a different one, but, now, he couldn’t help but wonder if something else had been at work.

Now, he couldn’t help but wonder if that was why Mollymauk Tealeaf was slipping into his thoughts and dreams like oil.

_I am sleeping in a dead man’s bedroom_ , Caleb thought to himself. In the silence of his mind, the words were as cold and as sharp as ice crystals. _I am sleeping in dead man’s bedroom. I am sleeping in a dead man’s bed._

_I am sleeping in Mollymauk’s bedroom_ , _and he knows that I am there_.

Caleb only barely restrained himself from looking back over his shoulder to see if he could catch a glimpse of the house. They were at the base of the hill now, just starting to exit the fog, and Caleb knew logically that with the angle of the hill and the barrier of the trees he would not be able to see much of anything, but all the same, something in him wanted to check.

For a few still, awful seconds, Caleb did nothing at all. And then, before he could think to stop himself, he twisted in his seat, looking back over his shoulder.

The mist at the end of the road roiled and shifted, moving slowly and lazily as though lapping against some unseen shore. It was thick, dense and impenetrable, but above it Caleb could make out the skeletal silhouettes of the tree branches, rising up the bank of the hill. He couldn’t see the house. He couldn’t see a window. He couldn’t see Mollymauk.

“You won’t see him this far down the drive,” Caduceus remarked as Caleb turned around in his seat to face the road again, his words perfectly calm and level for all that he seemed to almost be reading Caleb’s mind. “Master Mollymauk never comes very far from the house.”

Caleb didn’t even try to deny that he was looking for a sign of Mollymauk. It seemed pointless now, when Caduceus so clearly understood and recognised exactly what he was thinking. “Oh?” he said, glancing up at Caduceus next to him. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. He likes to stay up at the top of the hill. Sometimes you see him in the mist, but that’s very rare. He doesn’t seem to feel comfortable outside the building. Which is a bit funny, actually – in life he visited the village much more often than his brother.” Caduceus gave a short chuckle, and Caleb frowned. This wasn’t the first time that Caduceus had mentioned Mollymauk’s brother, and Caleb couldn’t deny that he was more than a little bit curious about him.

“Caduceus?” he asked quietly, after a few moments of silence.

“Yeah?”

“Did you, ah… you mentioned that Master Lucien had made several remarks to you. Did you speak with him often?”

Caduceus shrugged, his shoulders rising and falling beneath the strangely loose coat he wore. “Well, I wouldn’t say ‘often’, but… yeah, I spoke with him a few times. Before Master Mollymauk died he came and spoke to me while I was working a few times. Seemed like he needed an outlet of sorts, and he was polite and curious about what I was working with, so I didn’t see any reason not to speak to him. He was… well, maybe ‘quiet’ isn’t the right word for him. ‘Reserved’, maybe. He was confident, just… withdrawn. A bit like his father in that regard, actually.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Oh, all manner of things. He liked learning about plants. Seemed to take an interest in some of the weirder ones, too. Laburnum, foxglove, herb-of-grace, the brugmansia that the Lionetts left behind when they moved.”

Caleb frowned. Of the plants that Caduceus had listed he had only really ever heard of foxglove. He wasn’t a botanist in any sense of the word, only really being aware enough of plants to know which houseplants would be toxic to his cat, but he knew of foxglove. He knew it well enough to recognise it, and he knew it well enough to know that it was toxic, despite its common use as a decorative garden plant. He didn’t know anything about the other plants that Caduceus had listed.

He opened his mouth, about to ask after them, and then shut it again. None of this was relevant to his job, not really. His job was, as it had always been, to locate Lord Gustav’s will and inheritors. Unless it turned out that Lucien had taken such an undocumented interest in botany that he had retreated somewhere to study it further, this fleeting mention of his interest in plants was useless to Caleb. Many people were interested in plants. Many people were gardeners and never had to leave their town or village to learn more.

Caleb turned his head, his gaze falling to the plants that edged the road as they continued to travel. He couldn’t name any of them, but he had no doubt that Caduceus could. He wondered which of them Caduceus would count as ‘weird’. He wondered what Caduceus’ definition of ‘weird’ was.

The rest of the journey passed in silence as Caleb continued to watch as the rolling landscape gave way to the buildings of Alfield. Eventually, Caduceus drew the cart to a stop outside a small, neat looking establishment. A sign over the window written in a curling, looping script proclaimed it to be ‘The Sapphire Seamstress’; unlike some of the other shops in the town, the letters and embellishments on this sign were still bright and colourful, shining in countless shades of blue in the winter sunlight. The shop, Caleb deduced, could not have been open for very long. Everything else in the village seemed worn down somewhat, faded by time and weather, but this shop stood out from the others, as bright and as colourful as some of the candies Caleb had seen in Rexxentrum.

“Here you are,” Caduceus announced, nodding over at the shop. “Just head on in. Let Miss Jester know that I pointed you in her direction and she’ll do what she can to help you out.”

“You sound awfully sure about that,” Caleb replied, climbing down from the cart.

“Oh, I’m pretty sure. She knows what she’s doing. And she’s a good person, too – she likes to help out where she can.”

Caleb pulled a slight face, his back still turned to Caduceus so that the groundskeeper could not see it. He didn’t doubt that Jester was a lovely individual, but from what he’d gathered during his short conversations with her over the last few days, she seemed to follow the same train of thought as the rest of the village in that she would much rather see him leave than do anything to make his stay much more comfortable.

But he didn’t mention that to Caduceus. Caduceus seemed nice so far, polite and friendly and unaffected enough by the bizarreness of the situation that he was still willing to ferry Caleb to and from the house, and so Caleb merely thanked him for the lift and the information, and agreed to meet with him later before turning and stepping into the shop. Above his head, a small bell let out a cheerful tinkling chime as the door swung shut behind him.

His first impression of the shop was that it was a barely restrained explosion of colours. Bright fabric lay in neat stacks along the walls, roughly organised by colour, and ribbons of all fabrics and patterns hung from the ceiling above counters covered in little boxes of beads and neat packets of needles. Caleb couldn’t see any customers milling around save for one; at the back of the room he thought he spied the grey-green skin of a half-orc, bent in conversation with the familiar form of a blue tiefling, sat behind a long counter of polished wood. Both the half-orc and Jester’s heads raised at the sound of the bell jingling, with Jester immediately catching Caleb’s eye, her face breaking into a wide smile.

“Mr Widogast!” she called out. She reached up, waving one hand to catch his attention. “Hi!”

Caleb raised a hand awkwardly, giving a little half-wave back as he carefully crossed the room towards her. “Ah, _hallo_ , Miss Lavorre.”

“Are you here to buy something?”

“Um, _nein_ , I am… Caduceus- Mr Clay told me that I should speak to you. About- about the house.”

Immediately, Jester’s face changed slightly. It didn’t fall, not quite, but it lost the cheery, relaxed air it had had a moment before, becoming altogether more sober and serious. “Oh,” she said, her voice slightly quieter. “That’s- _Caduceus_ told you to talk to me?”

“Mm, _ja_.”

“About the _house_?”

Caleb shifted from foot to foot, coming to a stop just before the counter. “Something like that.” From the corner of his eye he could see the half-orc looking at him, a slight frown furrowing his brow. “I am… I am sorry, Miss Jester, for interrupting your conversation with this gentleman, but I do not believe we have met.”

“Oh, this is Fjord!” Jester said, some of her cheeriness returning to her voice. She hopped off down her stool and turned to Fjord, gesturing towards Caleb. “Fjord, this is Mr Widogast! He’s… he’s staying up at Tealeaf Manor for work, or… something.”

Caleb watched as one of Fjord’s eyebrows raised. “Oh?” he asked. “Is he now?”

“Mmhmm, yeah! He’s a, uh… he’s a…”

“I am an executor of last wills and testaments,” Caleb finished for her. “I have been sent to locate Lord Gustav’s will and see that it is carried out accordingly.”

“Well, I must say that that is not a profession I had ever truly been aware of before. It is certainly a pleasure to meet you,” Fjord said, holding out his hand. “We don’t get so many visitors here in Alfield, for whatever purpose.”

Caleb reached out automatically, taking Fjord’s hand and shaking it, but he couldn’t help but frown a little at the half-orc’s accent. It was a refined one, much more suited to grand, expansive cities like Rexxentrum and Emon than small, practically unheard of villages in the middle of nowhere, and it seemed decidedly at odds with the half-orc’s general appearance. He was well-groomed, his hair neatly combed and his facial hair carefully trimmed, but his clothing seemed simpler than Caleb’s or Jester’s, more similar in nature to Caduceus’ general garb. He didn’t seem like he would speak quite so well as he did.

“Ah, _ja_ , it’s likewise a pleasure to meet you,” Caleb managed to say, forcing himself to meet Fjord’s gaze. “Are you a resident of Alfield?”

“I am,” Fjord replied. He released Caleb’s hand and leant back slightly, gesturing vaguely towards the shop door. “I work the bar at the Uk’otoa’s Eye pub. It’s just down the road.”

“Oh, I believe Miss Beauregard may have mentioned that establishment to me the other day.”

“Well, if she was directing you to a place to find a drink then she would have been hard pressed to mention anywhere else. I’m afraid it is the only still-open establishment in Alfield, after The Wildmother’s Arms closed up all those years ago. And, speaking of it,” Fjord continued, glancing over at Jester, “I’m afraid that I will have to leave now. I have some… business to discuss with my employer.”

“You _always_ have business to discuss with your employer,” Jester muttered, but she didn’t seem too upset when Fjord gave her a small, rueful smile.

“Yes, well, you know how it is. It was a pleasure seeing you, Jester, as always,” Fjord said. Jester gave a little giggle as her downcast expression cleared, dropping a brief curtsy that Fjord returned with a shallow bow.

“It was a _delight_ seeing you too, Fjord,” she replied, her voice light and teasing and laced with a fanciful air that made Fjord snort in amusement. “I’ll see you soon, yeah?”

“Of course. Good day, Jester. Good day, Mr Widogast.”

“Good day,” Caleb replied automatically. Fjord nodded at him and then turned, the bell above the door jingling gently to mark his departure.

“…So,” Jester said once Fjord had left. “You said Caduceus told you to talk with me, right?”

Caleb nodded, glancing around briefly. “Mhmm, _ja_ , he did. Do you… do you have somewhere else we could talk? I do not know how long this conversation may take.”

Jester frowned a little at that but nodded. “Well… I have a back room we could talk in? It has a table, if you want to sit down.”

“ _Ja, bitte_.”

Jester nodded, leading Caleb through an archway covered by a loose curtain and into a small backroom. The colours were more muted here but were still present, giving the little, pokey room more life than Caleb would have expected. Jester pulled out one of the mismatched chairs at the aforementioned table and sat down, gesturing for Caleb to sit in the other one. “So,” she said, as he made himself comfortable, “what did you want to talk about? Something about the house, yeah?”

“ _Ja_. I, ah… Caduceus said,” Caleb started, feeling a little ridiculous. “He said that- he said that you would, perhaps, be able to talk to Mollymauk. Um. For me.” Gods, what was he even saying? Just a few short days ago, he hadn’t believed in ghosts at all, had known them to be fictitious and unreal and, above all else, utterly impossible in the rational world, but now here he was, talking to a seamstress about contacting a deceased tiefling. And, worse than all of that, he very nearly _believed_ what he was saying. He very nearly believed that ghosts were real.

He very nearly believed that his dreams of Mollymauk, and of the shadows clinging to the doors, and of the bloodstains on the paintings, may not have been dreams at all.

Caleb swallowed, drumming his fingers against his leg beneath the table. He didn’t want to believe that. He didn’t want to believe any of this- of this _nonsense_. He wanted to go back to the world he knew, where everything made sense, and everything had a rational, logical explanation. He wanted to be able to do his job, and find and execute the will, and then leave.

He wanted to find out what had happened to Mollymauk.

“Oh!” Jester replied, brightening up immediately. Her response made Caleb jump a little, startling out of his near-daydream. “Oh, yeah, I can do that!”

“You- really?” Caleb asked, caught a little off-guard by the immediacy of her reply.

“Yeah, sure! I mean, I’ve never actually _spoken_ to, like, an actual ghost before, but I know _how_ to do it, and it doesn’t seem very hard.”

Caleb frowned. “No? Have you spoken to something other than a ghost before?” _Gods, what am I saying_? He was barely willing to believe that ghosts existed, let alone anything else, but here he was all the same, asking perhaps the most ridiculous question to ever cross his lips.

Jester shifted uncomfortably. “We-ell,” she said slowly, “not _yet_.”

“…Are you telling me that you have never actually done this before?”

“I’ve done it!” Jester said, her tone immediately becoming defensive. “In, you know, in _practise_. I’ve just never done it fully, that’s all, but I know what I’m doing!”

“And what does that mean?” Caleb asked immediately, feeling his stomach starting to twist. _Gods_. This was a ridiculous endeavour to begin with, and now it turned out that the single individual who may _possibly_ have been able to alleviate some of his concerns if it turned out that ghosts _were_ real didn’t actually know what she was doing. “To have contacted a ghost in practise?”

“Well, I’ve, you know… I’ve set up all the candles, and made the space all nice, and I’ve read all the books about it. I even got a book from _Whitestone_ about it! They have, like, _loads_ of ghosts over there! And I’ve read the whole thing, so it’s not like I don’t know what I’m doing.” She crossed her arms over her chest defensively, leaning back in her chair and fixing Caleb with a look balanced somewhere between defiance and sheepishness. “And you’re not going to find anyone else here who’ll contact a ghost for you, so if you _want_ to talk to Molly about anything then it’s going to have to be with me.”

“Okay, alright, that is- that is fine,” Caleb said hastily, not wanting to upset or annoy his only hope of asking a deceased spirit why exactly it seemed to be watching him from the shadows and mirrors of the manor. “That is- _ja_ , I do not have any issues with that, Miss Lavorre. I do not have any experience with the supernatural myself, so you are already an expert when compared to me.”

That seemed to placate her somewhat. Jester leaned back in her chair, a smile starting to dance around her lips. “Well,” she said, “I do know a _lot_ of things that most people don’t know about ghosts. I know more than _Caduceus_ in some areas.”

“That is very good to know. And you, ah… when will you be able to- when can you perform the…”

“The séance?” Jester finished for him, and Caleb nodded awkwardly. Even now, discussing it in person, he didn’t truly want to say the words. He didn’t truly want to accept that this was happening. He didn’t want to accept that it was _necessary_.

“ _Ja_ ,” he said. “That.”

Jester pursed her lips together. “Well, I mean, I can’t do it _now_. Maybe on Friday? I’ll need to get everything together, and make sure the room is all nice and pretty-”

“Is that important?”

“If we’re contacting Mollymauk, then yeah.”

“But you just told me you have never spoken to him before,” Caleb pointed out, feeling confused, and Jester huffed out a long-suffering sigh.

“ _Yes_ ,” she admitted, “but I’ve, like, heard Beau talk about him a lot. Apparently, Molly really liked pretty things, and jewellery, and nice silks, and all sorts of peacock feathers and stuff, you know? And everything I’ve read has told me that you need to make a place feel welcoming to the spirit you’re trying to contact so that they feel comfortable and don’t freak out on you or whatever.”

“What- would that be a bad thing?” Caleb asked cautiously, even as half of his brain scoffed at the concept of ghosts in any way getting upset. They couldn’t get upset. They _didn’t_ exist.

They didn’t exist, and yet they had left blood on his cheek and footprints in the dust, and shadows that should not be able to move on their own had grabbed his ankle from beneath a shut door.

“Oh, yeah, that would be _super bad_ ,” Jester replied. “Like, _so_ bad. Just- really, _really_ bad. Apparently they can do things like make all the candles go out, or make shadows do weird things, or just generally be really awful to you! So it’s, like, really, really, _really_ important that you make sure that the ghost feels all comfortable and relaxed and all that, and doing things like making the place look like somewhere they know can help.” She paused, a thoughtful, contemplative look crossing her face. “Actually…” she continued thoughtfully a moment later, “if we could do the séance at the house, that would probably be the best. You said that you’ve already seen Molly up there so we _know_ that he’s close at the house, and it’ll be the _most_ familiar place for him, and-”

“No,” Caleb interrupted firmly. “No, no, we are- we are not doing the séance at the house, Miss Lavorre. We are- not there.” Not there, where so much of what she had described had already happened. Not there, where the wind murmured his name against his neck and the shadows looped their sinuous, winding tendrils around his ankles. Not there, where so often it was just Caleb, and his cat, and the spirit of Mollymauk Tealeaf.

Across the table from him, Jester frowned. “But,” she started, “but, if we go to the house, then the connection with him should be _really_ strong. I’ve read a lot of books about séances, you know, and they all say that the closer you can get to the ghost the better it’ll be. If you’re _super_ far away from the ghost then you can’t contact them at all, or they’re all patchy and weak and weird and stuff like that. They need, like, a _super_ strong draw to get them far away from the house. Something that they’re really attached to.”

“I can provide that,” Caleb said immediately, already going over various items and objects in his mind. “I- I know that- Caduceus told me that Mollymauk is rarely seen outside of the house, but I- I do not think…” He trailed, tapping his nails against the tabletop for a moment as he thought. “I do not think,” he continued eventually, “that it would necessarily be, um, that it would necessarily be _safe_ at the house.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“It is, ah… there have been… I just do not think it would be a good idea, that is all.”

“Hmm…” Jester narrowed her eyes, looking at him suspiciously for a moment. “If you say so…”

“I _do_ say so, Miss Lavorre. Anyway, what else will be delaying the- the session?”

“Oh!” Jester said, immediately brightening up a bit. “ _Well_ , even if you _do_ manage to find a good lure for Molly like, _today_ , we’ll still have to wait a little while.”

“Do not tell me that we need to wait for the- the phase of the moon to be correct, or-”

“No, no, don’t be silly,” Jester interrupted, waving a hand. “The moon doesn’t matter for this. I just need to convince Beau to join us, that’s all! But that’ll probably take a while.”

Caleb felt his stomach knot slightly at the mention of Beauregard. He’d only spoken to her once, but even that single meeting had been one conversation too many. Beauregard, it had seemed to him, had more or less loathed him on sight. He couldn’t imagine that trying to contact her deceased best friend around her would go well. “Do we… is Miss Beauregard entirely necessary for the procedure?” he asked weakly. “Would it not be possible for it to just be the two of us?”

Jester shook her head, making the little charms on her horns jingle quietly. “Nope,” she said, popping the ‘p’. “You can’t just go around contacting random spirits, Mr Caleb! That’s really, really rude, and they might get upset, or angry, or they might just not answer you _at all_ because they don’t have any reason to! But Beau was Mollymauk’s best friend – if _anyone_ will be able to make some sort of connection or, you know, sort of lure him through, then it’ll be Beau. But, and I don’t want to upset you, Mr Caleb, when she first met you she didn’t… you weren’t… I just don’t think she likes you very much. Sorry.”

Caleb very nearly snorted with amusement at the upset, almost apologetic look on Jester’s face, but just about managed not to. “Really?” he asked, doing his best to keep his voice level. “I had- if I am honest, Miss Lavorre, I may have picked up on that a little bit. Miss Beauregard did not seem very, ah, happy to learn that I was staying at the manor.” _Or that I was trying to locate Lord Gustav’s will_ , he added mentally. _Or that I was going to be organising the transfer or sale of the house as is necessary. Or that I exist in general, really_. “I cannot imagine that she will be particularly pleased to learn that I plan on, ah, _contacting_ Mollymauk either.”

“Mm, no, probably not,” Jester replied. “She was _really_ annoyed to find out that you’re poking around the house and everything. And she doesn’t even think ghosts are _real_ which is _stupid_ , but it won’t stop her from being any less annoyed at you.” She paused, glancing up at Caleb and pulling a slight face. “Um. Sorry about that?”

Caleb waved a hand. “ _Nein, nein_ , I think I understand,” he said. “It is- Mollymauk was her best friend, _ja_?”

“Yeah, they were super close! The two of them and someone called Yasha.”

“Well, I know that I would not be very happy to learn that a stranger was staying in my best friend’s house and planning to sell it, or that he was planning to contact my friend’s ghost, whether I believed in ghosts or not. It is… it would feel wrong, I suppose. If I was in her situation, I would feel that no matter what I believed in, if anyone were to contact my friend it should be me.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” Jester said, frowning to herself. “I might- can I steal that to help me convince Beau? Like, telling her that even if you’re here – no offense meant – she’ll still be able to talk to Molly too?”

“Please, go ahead.”

“Oh, good, that might make things easier! I don’t know how long I’ll be able to convince her to stay for though… it might be a kind of short séance.”

“That’s fine,” Caleb assured her quickly. “I do not need much information from him. I just need-”

_What?_

What did he actually need to hear from Mollymauk? What did he actually need to know? The only information that he really, truthfully needed to know was the location both of his brother and of the last copy of his father’s will, but there was absolutely no guarantee that Mollymauk would be able to help with either. After all, the events of his father’s will changing and his brother departing had both been set into motion by his own death. Mollymauk could be entirely useless when it came to both of those. In truth, Caleb didn’t need to speak to him at all.

_This is pointless,_ he thought to himself. _This is ridiculous_.

“I need…” he said slowly. “I need… I would like to… I need to ask him what he wants from me. I need to- I need to ask him why he is still here.” _I need to ask him what happened to him._ “I need to ask him why he has not moved on.”

“Ooh, good questions!” Jester replied cheerfully, as though Caleb were talking about queries he was planning to ask a respected academic, and not about speaking to an actual, literal ghost. “You should write those down so that you don’t forget them. Apparently a _lot_ of people freak out when they talk to a ghost and they forget everything they wanted to say, or they get _possessed_ and then they can’t ask any questions at all, or they-”

“Is that likely to happen?” Caleb asked, feeling his skin grow cold. _I do not believe in ghosts. I do not believe in-_ “Possession?”

Jester shrugged. “Well, maybe. But apparently you need, like, really _angry_ or _powerful_ ghosts to possess someone, and Mollymauk doesn’t seem _that_ powerful if he’s stuck up in his house all the time.”

“Oh. Alright then.” Caleb frowned to himself, tapping his fingers against his legs. “Is there- will _I_ need to bring anything to the- to the event?”

“Just yourself,” Jester assured him, “and whatever you want to bring to give Molly a nice focus to help bring him through. And any questions you have! And maybe something for Beau? Oh, and pastries.”

“Pastries.”

“Yeah, as payment. For _me_ ,” Jester added at Caleb’s confused look.

“Oh,” Caleb replied. “I- alright.” _Pastries_. At this point, a request for pastries was the least bizarre thing he’d heard in a while. “I will- I can do that.”

“But apart from that, you don’t need to bring anything special.”

“Good. That is- that is good. In that case, I do not believe we have much more to discuss,” Caleb said, rising from his chair and holding out a hand to Jester. “Thank you for speaking with me, Miss Lavorre. I will see you here on Friday?”

Jester nodded, standing and taking Caleb’s hand to shake it. “On Friday,” she confirmed. “I’ll set everything up upstairs. Come by at about… how about nine pm? Does that work? I’ll have Beau arrive early so that she maybe doesn’t freak out on you quite as much.”

“That sounds like a very good idea to me,” Caleb confirmed. “Thank you, once again.”

“Of course!” Jester chirped. “Enjoy the rest of your day!”

Caleb left the shop, Jester’s words still echoing through his head. He had plans for the rest of the day but he wasn’t sure quite how enjoyable they would be, seeing how they mostly involved delving through more paperwork. He made his way to the village archives, trying to dredge up any family connections that the previous executor may had left, and briefly considered visiting the morgue to get Mollymauk’s coroner’s report checked over, but dismissed that possibility. He had no reason to distrust the report, no matter what delusions about its potential for falsehood he may be harbouring.

Gradually, the hours passed, and eventually it was time for him to meet Caduceus just outside of the village for his lift back home.

“So,” Caduceus asked as Caleb climbed up into the cart, stirring the horse into motion. “How was it? Did Miss Jester agree to help?”

“It was… it went well,” Caleb replied, just a little uncertainly. “Miss Lavorre has agreed to run a- a séance for me. And, um, for Beauregard.”

“Oh, that’s nice of her!” Caduceus replied, sounding happy. “I’m glad she’s able to help you, Mr Caleb. You seem pretty tense whenever I see you at the house.”

Caleb gave a snort of laughter, managing to disguise it as a cough at the last moment. “Oh, _ja_? Do I?”

“Just a little bit. I wish I could have given you more warning.”

“ _Ja_ , well… when I first spoke to you, I didn’t believe in- in any of that.” _I still don’t_. _I think I don’t_. “I would not have been very receptive to further, ah, further warnings.”

“Ah, yeah, that’s very true. But, hey, it seems you’ve learned since then, and that’s good. Learning is always good. When are you going to be having this séance of yours, by the way?”

“Friday.”

“Oh, that’s pretty soon. You think you’re going to be ready for it?”

Caleb shrugged. _Yes. No. Maybe_. He’d done a fair few unusual things in his time, had seen plenty of funerals and had walked plenty of abandoned houses, but this was, even for him, out of the ordinary. He still wasn’t sure where he stood when it came to ghosts. He still wasn’t sure where he stood when it came to the supernatural.

He still wasn’t sure how much of this he believed, and how much of his disbelief was left to be shattered.

“I do not know,” he said eventually. “But I suppose there is only one way to find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be posted on **September 2nd!**


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Please note:** The end of this chapter starts leaning a little closer to the **explicit** rating, though I don't think it qualifies quite yet. If you feel otherwise, please let me know and I'll update the rating.

The passage of time had never seemed so swift and yet so slow.

Caleb had spent most of the ride back to the house in silence, trying to come to terms with what he had just agreed to do. Friday was still a few days off, giving him plenty of time to gather what Jester had told him he would need to bring, but he was unsure if it would be long enough to entirely silence the voice in his mind that insisted that it was a stupid, ridiculous concept. He’d seen many abandoned houses in his time, had heard countless tales of ghosts and of hauntings and of the supernatural weaving their way into people’s lives, and he’d never had cause or experience to believe in any of them. Séances were just a parlour trick, used to con grieving people out of their money when they were at their most vulnerable; no one could speak with ghosts because they simply did not exist. It was as straightforward as that.

And yet, as the days passed and Caleb continued to inspect and investigate the house, his already weakened disbelief only crumbled further. Small things that he had been so adamant to dismiss and ignore during his first few days at the house became unavoidable; uneasy thoughts that he’d been pushing aside surged to the forefront of his mind over and over again. He stood now in an uncertain, unbalanced place, with one foot in the realm of the supernatural and one still firmly planted in the certain, logical, rational world he had known for so long, and he did not know onto which side he would eventually topple.

The house, though, didn’t seem to care for his indecision. Though he had no more dreams over the next few days, never once returning to the shadowed hallway that seemed so determined to haunt him, he continued to encounter draughts where there should not be draughts, to see things move when he did not expect them to. The actions of the house, of Mollymauk, seemed to be changing, too, but Caleb was struggling to tell whether they were actually sinister or not. If he were honest with himself, the house as a whole was slowly starting to lose the sinister, unnerving edge that it had held for him. The breeze continued to blow, and the wind continued to moan around the bricks, and the branches tapped and the floorboards creaked and the footprints formed in the dust, but in an almost discomfortingly short period of time, Caleb found that he ceased to be disturbed by them. They simply _happened_. Whatever, _whoever_ was causing them, didn’t seem to be doing it maliciously. Moreover, it seemed to be happening almost in response to some of Caleb’s actions.

And, in addition to that, the ghost of Mollymauk seemed to be doing new things, too. For starters, it seemed that he was beginning to interact with Frumpkin.

More than once, now, Caleb had left a room to find his cat purring in an empty corridor, butting his head up against nothing and arching his back as though someone was scratching him. It had been unnerving the first time Caleb had seen it – to the best of his knowledge, Frumpkin had never acted so bizarrely before – but it, like the half-formed whispers as the flickering breeze, soon ceased to make Caleb in any way nervous. Frumpkin never seemed distressed by it. It was odd, yes, watching as his cat purred like mad for seemingly no reason, but it was also strangely nice. It made the house feel more open, more welcoming, as though it accepted Caleb and Frumpkin both.

If Caleb were entirely honestly, it mostly just seemed that the spirit of Mollymauk Tealeaf really, really wanted to pet his cat.

He’d started speaking to Mollymauk too, he’d found. It hadn’t started off entirely as an intentional thing, but as the days passed and he spent more and more time pouring over the table of papers in the dining room, he’d come to recognise pattern in the actions of the house, and had found himself responding to them in turn, as though Mollymauk was using the house to communicate with him. The draught that he’d never been able to pin down liked to flutter around his neck and hands as he worked, occasionally touching against his ankle at seemingly random intervals. Sometimes, when Caleb started leaving out papers relating to the specific details of Molly’s death the windows would start to rattle quietly, the breeze against his neck vanishing to instead tug against whatever pieces of fabric or loose objects it could find, stirring the papers before abruptly settling again.

And, sometimes, Caleb would look up from his work to see Mollymauk Tealeaf standing behind his chair in the reflection of the mirror, one hand on the table beside Caleb’s and a curious expression on his face. The first instance had been terrifying, making Caleb leap and swear and shove his chair back from the table. The second time, later that same day, Mollymauk had been slightly further away from his chair, looking somewhere between apologetic and amused. Caleb had jumped, then, but not quite as much. And, with each successive time after that, he became slightly more accustomed to the sight of Mollymauk. He still wasn’t exactly comfortable with seeing something that he could not see in the living world, still had concerns about the state of his own mind, but Mollymauk never seemed to _do_ anything. He just watched, impassive and silent, as Caleb worked, and Caleb had no idea what to make of that.

Caleb saw Mollymauk in other places in the house, too, always in mirrors or in reflections in the glass panes of the windows. The appearances never failed to startle him somewhat, especially outside of the dining room, but they ceased to terrify him the way they once had. They became- well, perhaps not normal, but very nearly expected. Feeling Mollymauk’s presence became expected. Sharing a house with Mollymauk’s spirit was still bizarre in a way that Caleb couldn’t even hope to ever truly comprehend, but it became almost normal. He did his work, and searched through the papers, and took his notes, and occasionally the wind would whisper his name against his neck and flutter the pages and send a different document to touch against Caleb’s hand. Sometimes it was useless to him, and sometimes it wasn’t, but every time without fail Caleb shivered at the sound of his name, and flinched when the paper touched his hand, and then read it. He needed to know what the contents of it were, even if he had read the paper before. He needed to know why Mollymauk – for it must be Mollymauk – had thought it was important that Caleb see it.

It was only a pity, he had thought absently on more than one occasion, that Mollymauk could not guide him towards something that was important to himself. 

Caleb had spent the last few days contemplating which of Mollymauk’s personal belongings he could bring with him to the séance, trying to think of something that would be unique and distinctive enough while still having clear ties to the tiefling, but now, with the séance happening the following evening, he’d only managed to come up with one idea. Multiple times now he’d encountered paintings or portraits of Mollymauk in the same embroidered waistcoat that he’d seen him wear in his dreams. The tiefling seemed inordinately fond of it – Caleb doubted that he only had the one waistcoat, as the family was clearly wealthy enough to afford a wide collection of clothing, and he had seen a few portraits of Mollymauk in other clothing, but the embroidered waistcoat did seem to be one item of clothing of which Mollymauk was very, very fond. Whether he was fond of it enough for it to be able to draw him to a séance Caleb didn’t know, but it was his best and only idea, and so it would have to do.

It had taken him no time at all to locate the correct wardrobe. He knew with certainty now that the bedroom he had claimed as his own had belonged to the late Master Tealeaf, and he’d seen the large, ornate wardrobe in the corner of the room multiple times over the course of his stay. It practically loomed before him, so large that there was barely any space between the top of it and the ceiling above. Caleb could very nearly feel the weight of Mollymauk’s curious gaze on him as he opened the tall, creaking doors, and started rummaging through the clothes within. Mollymauk, it seemed, had quite a collection – Caleb quickly encountered all manner of shirts and waistcoats and jackets, as well as shawls, cardigans, and even a few skirts and dresses, all of them in the same slightly ostentatious style that Mollymauk seemed to prefer.

After a few short seconds of searching, he felt the breeze play gently with his tied-back hair.

Caleb smiled. “I am looking for that waistcoat of yours,” he explained to empty air. “The, ah, the embroidered one.”

The breeze fidgeted again.

“For a- ah-… you know how there are supposedly all these methods of communicating with the supernatural, Master Mollymauk? Well, I may have… tomorrow, I will be attempting to contact- that is, myself and a few others will be trying to, um, speak to you.”

For a moment the breeze ceased in its actions. When it returned, it returned to gust against the hanging clothes in the wardrobe, making the hangers creak quietly against the rail.

_“Ja, ja_ , you are likely wondering what this has to do with it,” Caleb said. “You see… um, you know the shop of Miss Jester Lavorre, _ja?”_

The wind blew, whistling down the hallway beyond the door and fidgeting with the curtains before subsiding. _No._

“Oh,” Caleb said, continuing to leaf through the hanging clothes. The knowledge didn’t come as too much of a surprise to him, really – after all, Jester herself had mentioned that she had never encounter Mollymauk while he was alive. “Well,” he continued, “it, ah… it is… we will be trying to contact you there, at the shop. I do not – Gods, what am I even saying? – I do not know how far you can travel from this place, so I thought I would, ah, give you a notification of sorts. Her shop is in the village, you see. She has asked me to bring along something that belonged to you in life, something that you were particularly close with, to help you better locate us. Or something along those lines. I will not claim to understand the workings of, um… of séances.” Or of ghosts, or the supernatural, or of anything at all that Caduceus seemed so eager to talk about, and yet here he was all the same, talking to empty air, and believing that the whisperings of the wind was a response from a spirit. 

Caleb shook his head, trying to dismiss that thought from his mind. Right now, it didn’t matter if Mollymauk truly was responding to him or not. Right now, he just needed to find something that would draw the ghost of Mollymauk, if such a thing even existed, away from the house. His doubts, his uncertainties… they could all wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow, he would hopefully know for sure. He was perceptive, and intuitive, and he got the impression that Beauregard, with all her brashness, would not hesitate to leave if she suspected that anything false was occurring at the séance, provided that Jester even managed to convince her to join them in the first place. He could ignore his misgivings for now.

He could talk to Mollymauk for now.

“Anyway,” Caleb continued, shaking his head again and returning to the clothes before him. “Now that I have seen- from what I have seen of you in your paintings, you seemed to be fond of this one particular waistcoat. I do not know how strongly attached to it you are – oh, Gods, I do hope that you were not buried in it – but I was thinking that it would, perhaps be a suitable, um, _item_ to bring you to the conversation.” Caleb frowned, lowering his hands as he reached the end of the railing. He’d encountered plenty of waistcoats in his search, but none that were the one he was looking for. And, now that he thought about it, he’d seen the waistcoat several times in the last few days. It was the same one that Mollymauk always wore, the front of it always soaked and stained with blood. “…Mollymauk?”

The breeze sighed, skimming against his hand, and Caleb shivered.

“I do not suppose…” Caleb trailed off, wetting his suddenly dry lips before continuing. “I do not suppose that I, um, that I was correct about that? About you being, ah…” He lapsed into silence, chewing on his lower lip.

There was a sudden, sharp clatter as a small item fell from the shelf above the clothes rail and fell to the ground beside Caleb. Caleb flinched, jumping away from the sound, but when he looked down all he saw was a small, rose-coloured crystal on a delicate chain necklace, now lying against the floorboards of the room.

Caleb frowned. He crouched, reaching out for the pendant, and picked it up to inspect it. It was a pretty little thing, surprisingly plain and simple given what Caleb had seen of Mollymauk’s fondness for trinkets and charms; it was just the little crystal on the end of a smooth, golden chain, with no extra embellishments save for a pair of equally delicate and dainty gold stars that sat on either side of it on the chain. It was nice, undoubtedly, but even with his admittedly limited knowledge of Mollymauk, Caleb wasn’t sure how important the item was to him. He had never heard mention of it before, not in his notes or in any letters that he had read and, unlike the waistcoat, he couldn’t recall ever seeing Mollymauk wearing it.

But, he supposed, he was not Mollymauk. He did not know what objects mattered to Mollymauk the most. 

And if he was going to be speaking to a spirit that may or may not be there, he may as well listen to what it had to say, too.

“Do you… is this what you want me to bring?” he asked quietly, turning the pendant this way and that and inspecting it from all angles. A moment passed, and then Caleb heard another quiet clatter as another pendant fell, swiftly followed by another, as if they were being batted off some higher shelf. Caleb looked up, following the path the last one had taken, and saw, at the very top of the wardrobe, a shelf that he had somehow missed. It was situated just above the clothes rail, only taking up the very topmost foot or so of space. Caleb stood slowly, pendant still in hand, and saw that from where he stood just a few feet back from the wardrobe he could only barely make out the shapes of boxes and shoes if he craned his head back. Most of the boxes seemed to pushed back from the edge but there was one that rested right up against it, only half the size of Caleb’s own briefcase, and, as Caleb watched, another pendant slipped gently off it, and fell to join the others on the floor.

“That?” he asked quietly, and the wind sighed against his neck, making him shiver beneath his shirt. “You- do you wish for me to take the box, Mollymauk?”

Again, the breeze brushing against his neck. Again, the feeling of a barely-there caress against his skin. _Yes._

Caleb reached up with careful, cautious hands. The box was cool beneath his fingertips, the wood polished to a slick, smooth sheen, and when he lifted it down it didn’t feel as heavy as he thought it would. It wasn’t as ornate as he thought it would be either, given whose room he had discovered it in – it was surprisingly plain, made of a rich, dark wood inlaid with delicate designs of gold leaf and mother-of-pearl. It was still elegant, was still what Caleb, with his unadventurous wardrobe, would very nearly consider ornate, but it wasn’t nearly as extravagant as some of the other items in Mollymauk’s bedroom.

It wasn’t as extravagant as Mollymauk himself.

Caleb moved over to the bed, sitting down without once looking away from the box in his hands. “Is this it?” he murmured, running his thumbs over the inlays and across the ‘M.T.’ carved into the top of it. “Is this what you wanted me to find, Mollymauk?”

Once again, a breeze drifted through the room. Caleb looked up, watching and waiting with an odd sense of detachment. He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, not exactly; he wasn’t sure if he was waiting for anything at all, still being unsure of where he stood when it came to ghosts despite now being more than half-convinced of their existence. Part of him, the part that had experienced the dreams, and spoken to Caduceus, and listened to Jester, believed in the supernatural now, believed that Mollymauk Tealeaf was watching him from beyond the grave, but the part of him that he had curated over the last twenty years of his life held steadfast to disbelief, to logic and reason and mockery. Ghosts weren’t real. They _couldn’t_ be real.

But they were.

Mollymauk was real.

As Caleb watched, still and silent on the bed, the breeze flitted around the room. It brushed against the back of his hand in a swift, fleeting touch, briefly feeling like it was trying to push his hand closer to the lid of the box, and then it moved on to the peacock feathers still standing in the vase in the corner of the room. It toyed with them for a moment, making them sway back and forth as if bowing.

Caleb smiled. For reasons that he couldn’t hope to explain, he felt that he knew what Mollymauk was trying to say. “Alright,” he said quietly. He ran his fingers over the lid of the box again, sweeping them over Mollymauk’s engraved initials before letting them come to rest on the two small, golden clasps that held the lid shut. “Thank you, Mollymauk.”

The breeze sighed. The peacock feathers bowed. All around him, in a way he never had before, Caleb felt Mollymauk’s presence.

He looked down at the box in his hands, still smiling faintly, and then, with the soft sound of metal sliding against metal, he undid the clasps and opened the lid.

The inside of the box, he noticed immediately, was lined with velvet. There was nothing particularly startling about it, seeing how it was plain black in colour, but it caught him off-guard all the same. Velvet linings, he knew, were normally used to protect precious items, such jewellery or delicate objects such as crystal glasses, but there was no jewellery in this box. There was nothing that looked immediately expensive. All there was, was a small bundle sitting in the middle of the box, inexpertly wrapped in a loose scarf of some rich, dark purple fabric that seemed to be woven through with tiny strands of a dark auburn-bronze. It was a small bundle, no larger than Caleb’s hand beneath the wrapping, with no sign or tag to indicate what it was. Perhaps it _was_ jewellery, being kept extra safe by another layer of protection. In the paintings of Mollymauk, in his dreams and visions of Mollymauk, the tiefling had certainly been ornate enough to warrant a jewellery box, but Caleb felt rather certain that that wasn’t what this was. He had already seen what he presumed to be Mollymauk’s jewellery box, sitting off to one side of the vanity desk on the far side of the room beneath the dust-laden mirror. He wondered almost absently why the pendants that had fallen to the floor were on this out of the way shelf and not in Mollymauk’s ornate jewellery box, but the thought soon fled his mind. He could solve that mystery later. For now, he needed to find out what the box contained.

Caleb reached out, taking the object from the box. The wind sighed again, brushing against his neck in steady, regular intervals that didn’t disturb Caleb as they had only a handful of days ago. They felt familiar, now, expected and welcomed, and they didn’t stop as he slowly and carefully unwrapped the scarf. The fabric was soft and luxurious beneath his fingers, smelling faintly of lavender and opium, and for just a moment Caleb was overcome with the strange urge to lift the item to his face, and find out how good it truly smelled and how soft it truly was. But he didn’t. The scarf wasn’t his, anymore than this room was his or the sheets he was sleeping in were his. He had become more or less accustomed to sleeping in dead people’s rooms and searching through dead people’s belongings in the course of his career, but what he had just considered, however briefly… that went beyond even his strange definition of ‘normal’.

Eventually, the scarf unwound all the way. The object it had been protecting fell into Caleb’s lap with a dull thump; it felt surprisingly heavy for being so small a parcel. Caleb carefully wound the scarf back up and then set it aside, instead lifting the small cardboard box from his lap. It was a pretty thing, much more ornate than the wooden box it had been stored in, with patterns of moons and stars and constellations and feathers covering every inch of its surface, all the while giving absolutely no indication of its contents. It was clear, though, that great care had been taken in keeping it pristine – there were a few small scuff marks, as there always were on objects that were used and handled with any amount of regularity, but the card was mostly uncreased, the gold and silver foil accents still bright and shiny. Carefully, Caleb slid his thumb over the box, finding the little divot to open it, and then he lifted the lid and tipped the contents out into his other hand.

A riot of rich, jewel-toned colours met his eyes as the cards the box was holding fell into his fingers. They, like the box, showed signs of use, but also like the box they were in remarkably good condition. Caleb placed the box to one side, setting it down on top of the scarf, and then gently placed the cards in the base of the wooden box still open on his lap, resting them gently atop the soft velvet as he started to go through them. They were, each and every one, beautiful – they were printed on a dark, sturdy cardstock edged in a gold foil, each one uniquely decorated with some symbol or another. Caleb picked up a small selection of them, inspecting each one closely. He already had an idea what these were, and it didn’t take long for him to be certain. He’d seen cards like this before. He recognised the patterns of repeating symbols.

These were tarot cards.

“Is this what you wanted me to find?” Caleb murmured quietly. He felt the breeze brush over his knuckles, ghosting against the back of his neck, and shivered gently. “Were these yours, Mollymauk?”

It was a ridiculous question, and he knew it – after all, who else could the cards have belonged to? – but it felt polite to ask all the same. The breeze against his neck stuttered as though in laughter and then swept down, caressing the hand that held the cards. Caleb smiled.

“I thought so,” he said. He placed down most of the handful that he was holding, only keeping one card held between his fingers. He would never claim to understand the meaning of the cards, or even to believe that tarot worked at all, but he could appreciate art when he saw it, and he knew that what he held in his hand was exactly that. The card he was left holding was a simple one in comparison to some of the others that he had seen; it simply showed a full moon hanging in the sky above a still, undisturbed lake, lightly obscured by drifting clouds. It was pleasant art piece, though – the soft, dark colours of the lake and the brightness of the moon and its reflection caught Caleb’s eye, the drifting clouds reminding him of the mist that clung so close to the road outside the house. He turned the card this way and that, watching how the faint sunlight caught on the edges of the card and on the fine details of the moon’s surface. Almost absently, Caleb wondered what the card meant.

He inspected it for a few more moments before laying it back down with its companions in the bottom of the box, carefully realigning the cards into a neat stack. He picked them up, inspecting the delicate detail of the card backs before steadily, slowly slipping them back into their box.

As he started working them back into the box, though, the stack twitched in his hands slightly, as though being tugged by some opposing force, and a single card slipped free and fell to Caleb’s lap. Caleb finished putting the rest of the cards away before reaching for it, setting the little cardboard box back down in its wooden container as he reached for the card. It was much more detailed than the moon card, he realised quickly – this one seemed to show two people standing face to face, each of them holding a beautiful, elegant goblet of some sort, with a pair of snakes rising out of the goblets and twisting together. There were no words on the card, but Caleb felt that he didn’t need them. The name of this one, he felt, was rather apparent.

The two of cups, he thought, turning it back and forth. It was a pretty card, he would happily admit that, but whatever meaning it had was entirely lost on him.

“Did you do this, Mollymauk?” he asked. He lifted the card slightly, watching as the sunlight glinted off the gold foil. “Did you want me to see this?”

The breeze whispered, sighing his name for a moment before fading again, and Caleb gave himself giving a small, faint smile.

“You know that I do not understand what this means,” he said. He picked the card box up again, tucking the loose card into it before shutting it carefully and putting it to one side. “I do not have much experience with- well, with any of this, you know. Not tarot, or- or séances, or anything even remotely supernatural.” He paused, drumming his fingers against the box. “If I am honest,” he continued, his voice quieter, “I am not entirely sure if I believe in it. I am not entirely sure if I believe in you. You are just- you could very easily just be my brain playing tricks on me, Master Mollymauk. I know that Miss Jester and Caduceus seem convinced of your existence, but stranger delusions have been held by more people at once. You could- you could be anything. You could not be real. I could be mad.” Caleb gave a short, dry laugh, lifting a hand to rub it against his face. On the back of his knuckles, he felt the breeze touch as though in a kiss. “I could be mad,” he muttered again. He lowered his hand, looking down at the box on his lap. _I could be mad, or ghosts could exist._

_I could be mad, and all this could be a coincidence on the part of the wind, or it could not be._

_I could be mad, or Mollymauk Tealeaf could be existing here alongside me._

On the back of his hand, just for a moment, Caleb thought he felt the lightest of touches. He shivered, unthinkingly turning his hand into the touch. “Alright,” he said quietly, and felt the same touch again, brushing against his palm and slipping between his fingers. _“Ich-_ alright. I will bring these with me tomorrow. And I hope that they will be enough.”

Against his palm, the breeze touched again. Caleb twisted his hand slightly, not looking down as, as though he were holding someone’s hand, he very gently squeezed his fingers.

For the briefest, tiniest of moments, Caleb could have sworn that he felt something faintly squeeze back.

\---

For the first time since the night of shadows, Caleb dreamed that night.

His dream, as all of them had thus far, started once again in the hallway outside his room, but this time the hallway was gently, subtly different. There was no grime and dirt clinging to the walls and windowsills, were no cobwebs hanging from the rafters or wrapping the candle sconces in their fine, delicate lace. The hallway was bright, illuminated by sunlight pouring in through the windows of the entrance hall, and every colour that the walls and floor and paintings held seemed brighter, richer and stronger and altogether more pleasing. It felt like a different place entirely. It felt lived-in.

And, standing in this wonderfully, beautifully illuminated hallway, was Mollymauk, a faint smile on his lips and blood upon his shirt, standing just outside the bedroom door.

“Mollymauk,” Caleb whispered. Mollymauk’s smile widened slightly and then he turned neatly on his heel, glancing back over his shoulder as he approached his bedroom door. He maintained eye contact with Caleb as he reached out for the doorknob, his every action smooth and sure and certain. And, with a quiet click that echoed down the hallway, Mollymauk turned the door knob and stepped into his bedroom, vanishing from Caleb’s sight.

For a moment Caleb stood frozen in the hallway. Some part of him – a lot of him, if he was entirely honest – wanted to follow Mollymauk, wanted to step into the bedroom with him and try to understand what was going on, but another part of him was wary. He’d had dreams before of this house, of this hallway, and so far none of them had been even remotely pleasant. He didn’t want this to be another night that would bring him to consciousness wracked with fear.

But, for some reason, he didn’t feel like it would be. The hallway wasn’t shrouded in shadow and darkness, wasn’t whispering his name or distorting its own dimensions. It was just the hallway, with the clock ticking quietly at the far end of it and all the lamps and candles lit, illuminating it in a soft, golden glow. It felt pleasant. It felt welcoming.

It felt like the house, like _Mollymauk_ , wanted him to be there.

Carefully, cautiously, Caleb approached the bedroom door. It was still open, letting him see clearly through the room beyond, and he only hesitated for a moment at the threshold before crossing it. For some unknown reason, he trusted this dream. For some unknown reason, he trusted Mollymauk.

The bedroom of his dreams, he saw immediately, was not so different to the one of his waking world. The layout was still the same; the bed was still pushed up against the centre of one wall, a large tapestry hung above it, and there was the same vase of peacock feathers in one corner, tucked away besides the same grand, very nearly ornate wardrobe that Caleb still felt so uncomfortable about leaving his own clothing in. The furniture was the same, and the decorations were the same, and it was so, so similar that it was very nearly jarring to Caleb, for a moment making him wonder if he wasn’t dreaming at all.

But he was. He knew he was. Even here, in this familiar room, there were differences that marked this experience as not belonging entirely to his conscious mind.

The biggest and most immediate difference was strangely, the colour of everything. The bedroom he was accustomed to had colour, what with its wallpapered walls and somewhat threadbare rug, but not nearly so much as this room. There were no faded colours in this room, was no dust clinging thickly to the fabric of the tapestry or seeking to turn every bright shade of the peacock feathers monochrome. Everything was bright and vibrant, lit warmly by the light of a setting sun that shone through the dust- and cobweb-free windows. It glinted off the polished brasswork, turned the purple-red wallpaper a richer, softer colour and filled every corner of the room with a warm, welcoming light.

It shone, too, off the jewellery that adorned Mollymauk’s horns and tail. Caleb had never really noticed them before, not outside of the paintings – he’d always been too afraid, too anxious, too overwhelmed by the creeping shadows and the silent house to truly focus on Mollymauk himself, but he could see them now. He could see the rings of silver and gold that banded his tail, each one sparkling in the light as his tail slowly waved back and forth. He could see the fine, delicate chains that hung from his horns, connecting to the delicate cuffs on his pointed ears. He could see every little piece of jewellery that Mollymauk had collected and adorned himself with.

He could see Mollymauk himself, standing with his back to Caleb as he leaned forwards slightly to inspect himself in the mirror on his vanity.

Caleb took another step inside the room, reaching back almost unconsciously to shut the bedroom door behind him. It clicked shut quietly, sealing him inside the room, but unlike with every other instance of doors shutting behind him in this house, he didn’t feel afraid. He didn’t feel scared at all, actually. There were shadows here, yes, but they were natural things, chased back into the corners by the sunlight. They held no fear for him.

Mollymauk held no fear for him.

Caleb turned his head, inspecting the room for a single, fleeting moment before feeling his gaze being pulled back to Mollymauk. From where he stood he could see the fine arch and curve of Mollymauk’s back, could see the sweeping grace of his tail and the strong lines of his legs. He could see the delicate care of his hands as he adjusted one of his horn-caps, could see the pointed tips of his ears.

He could see Mollymauk’s eyes, beautiful and heart-stopping and lined with gold.

Mollymauk’s eyes snapped up, and met Caleb’s in the reflection of the mirror. For a single, heart-stopping moment Caleb felt as though he were caught in a spotlight, frozen in place where he stood, but then the moment passed and, with a half-smirked smile, Mollymauk winked at Caleb. Caleb felt his face colour almost immediately, his cheeks flushing and his ears surely turning a horrible shade of red as Mollymauk returned to inspecting his own face, tilting it this way and that in the sunlight. Caleb was unsure of what blemish or fault Mollymauk was chasing – from where he stood, little more than a few yards away, Mollymauk appeared entirely flawless – but Mollymauk only continued to inspect himself for a few moments longer. As Caleb watched, Mollymauk straightened up, his hands moving to the cravat tied around his neck. He undid it with deft, certain hands, letting it fall to the vanity before him before he moved on to working on the buttons of his waistcoat, undoing them one after another until the waistcoat fell slack. He shrugged out of it with an elegant roll of his shoulders, folding it loosely over one arm and placing it down next to the cravat.

Unseen by Mollymauk, Caleb swallowed. The trim line of Mollymauk’s waist, which had been so wonderfully accented by the waistcoat earlier, was hidden now by the plain fabric of his shirt, but somehow the state of barely-undress only served to make him more alluring. Caleb continued to watch as Mollymauk lifted his hands, swiftly and surely undoing the buttons of his shirt until it, too, fell open. He gave a soft, quiet sigh, the only sound in the entire room, and then, before Caleb had time to react, he turned.

Mollymauk’s shirt slipped from his shoulders as he turned, falling in a crumpled heap to the floor behind him, and Caleb could only barely hold back his gasp. The wound on Mollymauk’s chest was visible now, gently oozing blood onto the skin surrounding it, but Mollymauk didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t seem to notice the awful, jagged cut that slashed across his chest, nearly slicing through the flowers that wound down his skin. He didn’t seem to notice the way his skin was stained with scarlet. He just looked at Caleb, smiling softly and gently as the dying sunlight turned his eyes a startling shade of crimson. Caleb couldn’t move; he felt rooted to the spot as, with slow, careful steps, Mollymauk approached him, his smile never once wavering. He stepped from the half-shadowed half of the room into the sunlight, his face falling into the golden light, and, in that moment, Caleb felt his heart trip in his chest.

Mollymauk was undeniably beautiful, even with the wound cut across his chest. In the sunlight he seemed to be gilded in gold, every line of ink upon his torso and face made even more bright and colourful. The soft lavender of his skin seemed richer, somehow, the colour purer and deeper, and Caleb couldn’t stop himself from tracing the shadows of Mollymauk’s collarbones and lashes with his gaze. He wanted, he realised absently, to reach out to Mollymauk, and lay a hand on his skin and trace the pattern of those shadows with his fingers. He wanted to learn the shape of Mollymauk’s collarbones, wanted to follow the inked lines of the peacock and flowers down his body to where they just dipped beneath Mollymauk’s waistband. 

Caleb’s gaze flitted up and, just for a second, came to rest on Mollymauk’s lips. In this strange, unreal realm between waking and sleeping, there was no barrier in his mind to hold back his desire. In this world, where things were familiar and yet not, where the house was young and Mollymauk was alive, there was nothing to stop his thoughts from escaping him into the world of wishes and fantasies.

In this world, just for a moment, Caleb thought about how soft Mollymauk’s lips might feel against his own, and some part of him longed for it.

Caleb drew in a sharp breath when Mollymauk’s hands came to settle on his waist, the tiefling coming to a stop just before him. They were cold, as cold as his lips had been when he had first pressed a kiss to Caleb’s forehead, but it wasn’t the cold that shocked him. He had, somehow, known to expect that. He had expected for them to feel cold.

He hadn’t expected the flush of warmth that the contact sent through his body. 

He shivered beneath Mollymauk’s hands, goosebumps raising along his skin. “Mollymauk,” he whispered. He couldn’t look away from Mollymauk’s face. He didn’t want to look away from Mollymauk’s face. 

Mollymauk’s smile widened slightly. “Caleb,” he said quietly, and Caleb trembled again. Here, with no fear or worry to distract him, he could truly hear Mollymauk’s voice for the first time, and it was-

It was…

Gods, it was gorgeous. It was soft, gentle and kind and just touched with a hint of teasing, an indescribable accent flowing beneath it that made Caleb long to hear it again. He drew in a wavering, uncertain breath, unable to look away, and when Mollymauk repeated his name it was all he could do to keep himself from shivering.

“Mr Caleb,” Mollymauk murmured again. Caleb felt Mollymauk’s thumbs brushing against his sides, sweeping back and forth over the fabric of his shirt and waistcoat, and some part of him wished that the fabric wasn’t in the way. Some part of him, deep in the back of his mind, absently wished for more. “Caleb, darling… if you insist on staying in my bedroom, I must insist that you call me Molly.”

Caleb didn’t know how to respond to that. He didn’t know what he had expected from a- well, from a dream such a this, for it could only be a dream, but he had not been expecting that. He had not been expecting the familiarity with which Mollymauk approached him, with which Mollymauk spoke to him.

Silently, Caleb turned over the word ‘Molly’ on his tongue. It felt odd there, too casual for the bizarre relationship that they had, but he couldn’t deny that some part of him liked the feeling of it.

Before him, Molly was still talking.

“I am so sorry for startling you,” Molly murmured softly, as Caleb pulled his attention away from the shape of Molly’s name, and away from the hands on his waist, “but I didn’t know how else to get your attention.”

“Get my attention?” Caleb echoed. “ _Was-_ why did you need to get my attention?”

“To show you that I was here.”

Caleb frowned. “But you- I know that you are here, Mollymauk. I have seen you.”

“No, Caleb, you don’t,” Molly said quietly. “Not consciously, you don’t. Not out there.”

“Out where?”

Molly tilted his head towards the window, his eyes never once leaving Caleb’s. “Out there. In the… well, the waking world, I suppose. You’ve been talking to me – which I do appreciate, by the way – but you’re… well, you’re hesitant. I don’t blame you, though. This is a strange situation – even I’ll admit that.”

Caleb couldn’t dispute that. ‘Strange’ was hardly the strongest word he’d be willing to apply to the situation at hand, but it was definitely fitting. 

“I cannot always see you, either,” Molly continued quietly. “You can be hard to make out at times. Sometimes I can’t tell who’s in the house, if it’s you or if it’s…” Mollymauk trailed off, his face growing uncertain, and Caleb felt something cold seize his chest.

“If it is who?” he asked. “If it is _who_ , Mollymauk- Molly?”

Molly shook his head. On his horns, the small chains chimed their own quiet medley of metal. “I can’t tell you now,” he said. “This is- there is only so much I can do like this. It’s very hard to do this, I’ve got to tell you. But I will speak to you soon, I promise you, so long as I can.”

“How soon?” Caleb heard himself asking. Already he could feel this strange, dreamless dream starting to fade, the edges of the room growing blurred and distant. “How- how soon, Mollymauk?”

“Molly, please. And soon enough, dear. You’ve got my cards – and I can’t tell you how much effort that took, you know. I don’t – if he isn’t here, if no one comes visiting, then I’ll see what I can do. I’ll see where I can be.”

Caleb felt his face creasing into a frown. “If _who_ isn’t here, Mollyma- Molly? Who are you talking about?”

For a few seconds, Molly said nothing, the tiefling looking away as he frowned to himself. Caleb felt Molly’s thumbs pause against his waist for a moment, felt Molly’s tail skimming against his ankle, and, just for a moment, his knees turned weak. He didn’t know what it was about Mollymauk, didn’t know what power he held, but every light touch of his body against Caleb’s felt like fire, sparking something hot and smouldering within him.

And then the moment passed. Molly looked back at him, capturing Caleb’s gaze, and Caleb felt his heart trip in his chest at the sight of Molly’s fire-red eyes, felt his stomach grow warm at the steady, smooth brushing of Mollymauk’s thumbs over his waist. “Caleb?” Molly asked.

_“J-Ja?”_

Mollymauk smiled. “Wake up.”

Caleb’s eyes flew open as he woke with a gasp, feeling the last remnants of heat fading between his legs. He was alone in the bedroom- his bedroom- _Mollymauk’s_ bedroom, with not even Frumpkin lying beside him. Morning sunlight shone through the gaps in the curtains, revealing a small gap in the door that Frumpkin must have left the room through, and for a moment all Caleb could think about was his dream, where the sunlight had been so much stronger and every colour in the room had been so much brighter.

Where Mollymauk had been so much brighter.

Where Mollymauk had touched him.

Where Caleb had heard the shape of his name on Mollymauk’s lips.

Caleb lifted one hand, scrubbing it over his eyes. _Gods_. He didn’t want to admit, not even to himself, how much a part of him longed to return to the dream, to the softness of Molly’s touch and the heady sound of his voice. He stirred beneath the blankets, moving to sit up, and then paused when he felt something cold and sticky touch against his leg beneath the blankets.

With slow, careful hands he lifted the blanket, and felt his heart skip a beat at the evidence of his own interest cooling in his pants.

* * *

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art in this chapter was done by [fswrites](https://twitter.com/fswrites)!
> 
> The next chapter will be posted on **September 11th**!


	8. Chapter 8

Beyond the walls of the bedroom the branches tapped quietly, requesting entry of the ancient, vine-covered stones, but Caleb barely heard them.

“Gods,” he muttered to himself. He stared down at his lap, seeing the dark mark left on his pyjama pants as his brain slowly woke up, and felt revulsion rising in his throat as the nature of the situation slowly dawned on him. “ _Ich-_ Gods, _verdammt_.” He’d- gods above, he’d- somehow, in his dream, in his unconscious state, his body had reacted like this, and he’d found his own pleasure in the night to thoughts of Mollymauk. He couldn’t recall anything particularly arousing happening in the dream, couldn’t recall anything specifically sexual happening beyond the touch of Mollymauk’s hands on his waist, but even that touch had been light, gentle and static and undeniably not intended to be remotely sensual in nature.

But at the same time, Caleb couldn’t deny that _something_ must have happened. Not with the evidence so apparent in his pyjama pants.

He lifted a hand, scrubbing it over his eyes as though trying to wipe the stain away. “Gods,” he muttered again. “ _Gods_.” He dropped his hand, letting it curl atop his thigh as he stared back down at the mark before him. There was no denying its existence – whether he liked it or not, he had somehow, for some reason, at some point in the night, found his release to a dream of Mollymauk Tealeaf. He’d been aroused by a dead person, had got off to thoughts about a dead person, while all the time being in that same person’s bed. In all his years working as an executor Caleb had slept in several beds that once belonged to the deceased, – though never, thankfully, one that someone had actually died in – but this had never happened before. It had never had _cause_ to happen before. The vast majority of the time the wills he was carrying out belonged to elderly people who, though they may have been beautiful or handsome in their youth, didn’t hold much in the way of attraction. And, hells, but he still _was_ carrying out the will of someone far older than himself! He was unsure of exactly how old Lord Gustav was, seeing how the ages of half-elves were hard to identify based on sight, and while he was a striking man, he wasn’t quite Caleb’s type. He wasn’t the type to linger in Caleb’s thoughts.

Except, of course, that he hadn’t been thinking about Lord Gustav.

He’d been thinking about Mollymauk.

The entire time he’d been in bed, if not the entire time he’d been in this house, he had been thinking about Mollymauk Tealeaf.

Caleb rose from the bed in a hasty, jerky motion. He wiped a hand over his eyes again and then, after drawing in a few long, calming breaths, set about cleaning himself up as quickly and efficiently as he could, discarding his pyjama pants to the house’s ancient, dusty laundry room to deal with them later. He didn’t want to think about them right then, didn’t want to think about anything to do with the dream of the previous night, or the situation he’d found himself in upon waking, or anything at all to do with Mollymauk. He didn’t want to remember the touch of Mollymauk’s hands on his waist, or the soft, smooth cadence of his voice, or the goddamn _wink_ that he’d sent Caleb that had made him flush scarlet all over.

But, despite his best efforts to throw himself into his work, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about Mollymauk, either. He distracted himself as best he could with documents, drowned his thoughts in letters and receipts and useless, arbitrary pages that gave him no information of any importance, but time and time again his thoughts kept circling back round to Mollymauk. No matter how much he tried to ignore the murmurings on the wind, or the brushing of the breeze against his hand, he couldn’t forget the sight of the tiefling’s lavender skin, or scarlet eyes, or the shiver and warmth that had run through him when Mollymauk’s hands had settled on his waist. He couldn’t forget how beautiful his own name had sounded on Mollymauk’s tongue.

_Call me Molly_ , Mollymauk had said, all familiarity and warmth and just a hint of teasing, and Caleb had. Caleb had called him Molly, and had acknowledged that he was sleeping in Molly’s bedroom, and then he’d woken up to fading pleasure between his legs, and he didn’t know _why_. There had been nothing sexual in the dream, not beyond what Caleb was now gathering to be Molly’s naturally flirtatious nature. Molly’s hands had been on his waist, and he had cast a wink in Caleb’s direction, and he had divulged himself of shirt and waistcoat and cravat before turning to face him, but whether those actions were deliberately intended to be alluring or not, or if they were just Molly’s natural style of acting and behaving, Caleb couldn’t say.

But, likewise, he couldn’t deny that they had had an effect on him. He couldn’t deny that the sight of Mollymauk, shirtless and painted with gold in the fading sunlight, had affected him more strongly than he had expected.

_Did_ he find Mollymauk attractive? The answer to that question was immediate and obvious: yes. Yes, of course he did. Caleb was no stranger to his own attraction, knowing full well that he was drawn to men just as much as he was to women, and Mollymauk was, without question, a handsome individual. Gods, he was more than handsome, really – he was gorgeous, beautiful and elegant in a way that Caleb had never really encountered before, somehow managing to pull off his unique, ostentatious sense of style. He had wonderful features, and a smile that hinted at knowledge and mischief while still shining with kindness, and his tattoos were literal works of art that only served to make him look even more uncommonly beautiful. Anyone would be attracted to him, Caleb felt. That was only natural.

And if anyone were attracted to him, then they should surely be attracted to his brother, too. After all, the twins shared the same features, had the same physicality, and yet Caleb found that his thoughts landed on Lucien not even half as much as they did on Mollymauk. Lucien, for all intents and purposes, should have been more Caleb’s type. He was handsome, yes, but he was also sensible, with an interest in business and, going on what Caleb had gleaned from numerous letters, the desire and motivation to see that interest come to fruition. He dressed closer to Caleb’s style, carried himself in a more calm and rational air, and was less prone to the carousing that his twin loved to take part in. If Caleb were to be drawn to anyone, he should be drawn to Lucien Tealeaf.

And yet he wasn’t.

And yet, his mind had chosen to latch onto Mollymauk Tealeaf, who had been dead for a number of years. It was stupid. It was ridiculous, in fact. This shouldn’t be happening, not now, not to him.

But then Caleb remembered Molly’s soft smile, and the touch of his hands against his waist, and felt himself shiver all over again. Mollymauk was more than just the clothing that he wore. He was more than his tattoos. He was more than his reputation, or his boldness, or the brashness and colour that separated him from his brother. There was something else to him, something that had more to do with personality and spirit than appearance, that drew Caleb to him like a moth to a flame.

Just as Caleb though that, he felt the breeze brush over his hand again. Unthinkingly he turned his hand, letting it rest palm-up on the table, and a moment later the breeze skimmed along his fingers, pressing and curling as though seeking to take hold.

Caleb swallowed. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, speaking the words without truly thinking about them. He didn’t know what he was apologising for, didn’t know if he was apologising for finding Molly attractive, or for sleeping in his room, or for- or for whatever else had happened in the night. “I am sorry for- for-… _ja_.”

Against his fingers, the breeze moved in a gentle, soothing pattern, and Caleb felt his breath shudder out of him. He wanted to apologise further, wanted to apologise for the specifics of the previous night, but to say that it had happened would be to admit it, and to admit that Mollymauk may have seen it.

And that was a good point – how much _had_ Mollymauk seen? Caleb was still unsure of exactly how Molly interacted with the house, with how much control he had over its actions and how he moved through it. He seemed to know where Caleb was most of the time, seeing how the breeze and whispers appeared to follow Caleb from room to room, but whether Molly could see everything that happened in the house or not, Caleb didn’t know. He’d noticed that when Mollymauk was playing with Frumpkin or was otherwise distracted by the cat, he didn’t seem to be present near Caleb, but the exact specifics of what ghosts were capable of escaped Caleb. The exact specifics of how much Molly was able to see were unknown to him. And Caleb hated not knowing.

Had Mollymauk seen him last night, outside of the dream? Caleb shivered at the thought, but he couldn’t tell exactly what feeling caused the prickly flush of hot-cold that chased down his spine. Had Mollymauk seen him in his bed, rutting against the mattress? Had Mollymauk seen him spend himself in his slumber? Had Mollymauk noticed it, recognised what was happening, realised that Caleb must be thinking of him, his mind still fixed in the world of the dream?

Had Mollymauk wanted it to happen?

Did Caleb want it to happen again?

Caleb shivered again. The wind sighed against his neck, caressing his skin like the touch of a lover. It played with his hair, twisted around his ankle and stroked along his arm and wrist, soothing and comforting and warming all at once. Caleb knew, now, that the breeze was Mollymauk’s doing. He was certain of it. The breeze was his touch, and the whispers were his words, and despite everything that had passed the previous night, he was choosing to do this. He was choosing to touch Caleb in this close and familiar manner, was choosing to make his presence known throughout the house. For some reason, it seemed that he still wanted to be close to Caleb. For some reason, it almost seemed like he liked him.

Caleb swallowed, his hand flexing. He couldn’t- he shouldn’t- he _couldn’t_ keep thinking about this, not right now. He had a job to attend to, after all, had a will to track down and a tiefling to find and a gods-damned _séance_ to attend to that very evening. He couldn’t let himself be distracted by thoughts of Mollymauk, and Mollymauk’s hands, and Mollymauk’s lips, and the warmth that he could even now feel slipping along his veins. Around him the breeze sighed again, stirring the papers and sending a new one drifting across the table until it settled just before his hand.

“ _Danke_ ,” Caleb murmured absently. He reached out for the sheet of paper, grateful for the distraction, and drew it towards himself. He would have time to think about Molly later. He would have time to decipher what happened last night later.

Caleb shut his eyes for a moment, forced his mind to return to the task at hand, and waited for the evening to meet him.

\---

When Caleb arrived at Jester Lavorre’s house later that day, the sun long having since set, it was to find her already standing in the doorway, a heavy shawl around her shoulders to ward off the winter chill as she waited for Caduceus to drop Caleb off. She waved at Caleb as he approached, stepping aside and holding the door wide open for him.

“Mr Widogast!” she said delightedly. “Hi!”

“Um, _hallo_ ,” Caleb replied, stepping past her and into the warmth of her little shop, drawing his coat close about him. “Good evening, Miss Lavorre.”

Jester giggled. “You need to stop being so formal, you know,” she said, starting to lead him through the shop. “You can call me Jester, you know. We’re friends, after all.”

“…Jester,” Caleb said cautiously, and Jester giggled again. “Well I, ah, I suppose if we are- if we are going to be addressing each other so casually, then you might as well call me Caleb.”

Jester turned slightly, flashing a smile at him over her shoulder. “Caleb. I like that!” She continued walking, leading him past the shop counter and through the back room they had held their conversation in only a few days previously, opening a door that led to a flight of stairs. Caleb followed her up, feeling uncomfortably conscious of every creak of the stairs and whispering of the wind. They felt like the sounds of the manor, but there was something about them that marked them out as subtly different. Unlike at the house, these sounds held no comfort for him.

Unlike at the house, none of these sounds had any indication of Mollymauk’s presence.

Caleb shivered slightly as they reached the top of the stairs, following Jester out into a small, but well laid-out sitting room. The walls were draped with silk in all manner of colours, and here and there Caleb spied a few other decorations in the forms of clusters of peacocks, their large, staring eyes shimmering faintly in the candlelight that came from the table laid out in the middle of the room. The table seemed to be covered in a cloth of some sort, gold and silver embroidery glinting and shining in the light and, right in the centre of it, was a large crystal ball.

Caleb raised an eyebrow. “Really?” he asked. Jester stopped, turning towards him with a frown, and Caleb nodded over at the ball. “Is that truly necessary? I thought that ornaments such as that were more for show than for the actual, ah, _summoning_ of spirits.”

Jester rolled her eyes. “ _Yes_ , it’s necessary!” she insisted, leading Caleb further out into the room. There was a soft clattering sound from beyond the curtain hung across the doorway on the far side of the room, but Jester paid it no mind. “This needs to look good! It’s _important_! A ghost isn’t just going to show up if it doesn’t look how it should, you know, especially not _Molly_. He’s going to have standards. Beau helped me set it up. It should look a bit like his bedroom, apparently.”

Caleb bit his tongue, biting back his immediate agreement. He didn’t know why, but he wasn’t particularly comfortable with the idea of Jester finding out just how intimately familiar he was with Mollymauk’s bedroom. He also, rather more pressingly, didn’t want Beauregard to find out, either. He cleared his throat, nodding towards the covered doorway. “Is, ah, is Beauregard here already? Did you manage to convince her to join us?”

Jester nodded, her face lighting up. “Oh, yeah! She was, like, _pretty_ grumpy about it to begin with, but then I told her that she might be able to actually talk to Molly if it worked, and then she was _really_ eager to help out. She even brought a picture of Molly for me to use as a focus. Look!” Jester half-turned, pointing towards a framed image that stood beside the crystal ball on the table. It was, unexpectedly, a photograph, sepia-toned and surprisingly restrained given the subject matter. The photograph showed Mollymauk, half-twisted in a plush chair so that he was facing the camera over the back of it, one arm draped lazily along the back of the chair. His legs were crossed, the tip of his tail curled up so that it was just visible in the frame, and there was a lazy grin on his face that was more than halfway to a smirk. He looked like he knew exactly what the viewer was thinking. He looked like he knew exactly what _Caleb_ was thinking.

Caleb swallowed. The smirk Molly was wearing was far, far too similar to the one had had worn the previous night for Caleb’s liking. It reminded him of how it had felt to feel Molly’s hands on his waist. It reminded him of how he felt upon waking.

Beside him, Jester was still bustling around, tidying a few things on the table before turning towards him. “Anyway,” she said, snapping Caleb out of his Mollymauk-induced daze, “now that you’re here, we can get started!” She turned towards the kitchen, lifting one hand to her mouth. “Beau!”

There was some rustling from the kitchen and then Beau appeared in the doorway, pushing the curtain aside. She seemed to have discarded the jacket and waistcoat she had been wearing the last time Caleb had encountered her, but her expression was exactly the same. She took a few steps out of the kitchen, levelling Caleb with a flat, cold look. A few uncomfortable seconds passed, and then her expression cleared slightly as she lifted her chin in a short nod of greeting.

“Hey,” she said.

Caleb blinked. Beauregard didn’t sound as outright hostile as she had the first time they met. She still sounded reserved, guarded and untrusting of the newcomer that was Caleb, but much of the anger that had clung tight to her words in their first conversation was gone now. “Uh,” he said, “ _hallo_.”

“You said your name was Widogast, right?”

Caleb nodded. “Caleb Widogast, _ja_.”

“Hm. And you’re the executor of the estate?”

“I am,” Caleb confirmed, feeling his skin growing prickly. He didn’t like these questions. He didn’t know where Beauregard was going with them, but he didn’t like them all the same. “I am- Lord Gustav left the execution of his will to the company that I work for, so they sent me out.”

Beau nodded slowly. “Right,” she said. “Yeah, I know the process. You’re with Feelid Executors, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

Caleb frowned. “I am,” he said cautiously. “Do you know them?”

“I’m… familiar with them,” Beau said, her words vague but her tone sharp enough to discourage any further questions that Caleb may have had. “We’ve run into each other before, so to speak.”

“Oh,” Caleb said, and let his words end there. He didn’t like the look on Beauregard’s face, or the tone of her voice, and he wasn’t here to pick fights. He was here to- gods, he was here to try to _speak with a ghost_ , and that was it. That was all he needed to do. He glanced over at Jester, feeling horribly uncertain and off-balance, and Jester sighed quietly, reaching out for his elbow.

“Go on, you go sit down,” she told him, turning him towards the table and giving him a slight push. “You too, Beau. Caleb, get out whatever it is that you brought! I just need to finish a few things and then we can start, okay?”

“I… okay,” Caleb mumbled, stumbling a little at the unexpected strength in Jester’s push. He made his way over to the table, placing his briefcase in front of one of the two chairs that didn’t have what he could only assume was Beauregard’s jacket slung over the back of it. He’d briefly considered bringing Molly’s cards in his coat pocket, but had been too worried about possibly damaging them. He had seen how carefully Mollymauk had packed them away. He had seen the velvet, and the scarf, and all the layers of security and protection. He couldn’t care for them as well as Molly had, but the least he could do was tuck them away in his briefcase, so that even if he fell, the cards would still be alright.

“What’ve you got in there?” Beau said out of nowhere as Caleb opened his briefcase, close enough to make him jump.

“ _Scheiße_ ,” Caleb swore quietly, feeling his heart pick up for a moment. “You are- has anyone ever told you how quiet you are before, Miss- Beauregard?”

“A few people,” Beau replied blandly, before nodding towards Caleb’s briefcase. “But stop dodging the question. What’s in there? You got papers? Did they provide you with all the- all the important shit?”

Caleb felt his forehead furrowing into a suspicious frown. “… _Ja,_ they did,” he said cautiously. “I have the old will, and a copy of Lord Gustav’s death certificate, and a copy of Mollymauk’s death certificate and his coroner’s report-”

Beauregard snorted, cutting him off before he could finish. “You know that thing’s fuckin’ fake, right? The coroner’s report?”

Caleb froze. “…W _as_?”

“Yeah, it’s bullshit,” Beau repeated, crossing her arms over her chest as she nodded down towards Caleb’s briefcase. “My friend Cali, she works down at the morgue. She had a look at it for me when I was- she had a look at it for me a while ago. Turns out it’s all bullshit, or something like that. Like, the signature’s wrong for who should’ve been on shift, or the- this stamp or whatever isn’t there. I don’t know. She was mostly just excited about having uncovered some ‘great mystery’ or something.”

At the back of his mind, Caleb remembered reading the report for the first time, and feeling uncertainty run along his nerves. He remembered reading it, and thinking of Mollymauk, and remembering the blood stain on Molly’s chest, and how the description given in the report had in no way matched what he had seen in his dreams.

“Oh,” he said quietly, and his voice came out gentler than he had expected. “ _Ich_ \- oh.”

For a moment, Beau’s expression seemed to soften somewhat. Her gaze flitted from Caleb’s face to where his hands rested at his sides, twitching and flexing anxiously, and, briefly, the harsh edge that she’d been carrying seemed to melt away. “Tell you what,” she said, “I’ll- if you give me some time, I’ll see if I can work with Calianna and hunt down the real one for you. I tried a while ago, but I- I don’t know. It didn’t work. But I can try again.

Caleb looked up at her, absently opening his briefcase as he did so. “You- would you really do that?”

Beau shrugged, looking away. “I- yeah,” she muttered. “You- yeah.”

“…Thank you, Beauregard.”

“Yeah, cool, whatever, don’t mention it.”

Caleb nodded to himself, looking back down at his briefcase as he drew out the package of cards, unwrapping the scarf from around them before placing them down gently on the table before him. He wasn’t sure if he should remove them from the box or not, wasn’t sure how Jester might want to incorporate them into the séance, but he barely had the time to dwell on it before he heard Beauregard gasp from beside him, and a split second later she leaned past him, reaching for the box.

“Wait, wait, hold on! Where the fuck did you find this?” Beau demanded, snatching the box up from the table to hold it before Caleb’s face. “Seriously, man. Where the _fuck_ did you find this?”

Caleb shrugged, feeling discomfort prickling along his skin. “ _Ich-_ it was just in his wardrobe, that was all. There was a shelf at the top which held the box that contained it. I just- I spotted it while I was looking for something to bring, and felt that these, um, that Molly- Mollymauk’s tarot cards could perhaps be a useful item.” He made no mention of the falling pendants that had guided him to his discovery of the tarot cards. He made no mention of how he had, almost unthinkingly, spoken aloud to the empty, echoing room.

He made no mention of his dream, or the events that followed it.

Beau narrowed her eyes at him, seeming unconvinced by his explanation. “In the wardrobe, huh?”

Caleb nodded. “ _Ja_.”

“In the wardrobe that’s been locked for fuckin’ years?”

Now it was Caleb’s turn to frown. “It- _was_?”

“It’s a locked fucking wardrobe, asshole,” Beau repeated, placing the cards down on the table with more care than Caleb would have expected before leaning forwards towards him. “It’s been locked ever since Molly died. You know how big, old, fancy-ass wardrobe have those locks on them? Well, Molly’s had a lock, and it was locked when he died, and no one knows where the fucking key is. Not even Nott was able to unlock it, and she’s _real_ fuckin’ handy with those little picks of hers.”

“It wasn’t- it wasn’t locked when I found it,” Caleb stammered, feeling himself growing more uncomfortable by the moment. It definitely hadn’t been locked, he was sure of that. He hadn’t had cause to try the wardrobe at any other point that week, instead opting to keep his clothes in their case to keep them at least somewhat dust-free, but it had opened easily before him, and to the best of his knowledge no one else had been in the house to unlock it. It had just been him.

It had just been him, and the spirit of Mollymauk.

“ _Okay_ ,” Jester interrupted loudly, brushing past them as she made her way to the other free seat at the table. “No more arguing, Beau, you promised me that you’d try to be polite.”

“I didn’t promise _shit_ -” Beau started, but Jester quickly cut her off by loudly pulling her chair out from the table and sitting down pointedly.

“You _promised_ ,” she said again. “Now, do you want to talk to Molly or not?”

“… Yes.”

“I thought so. Now sit down, and take our hands so that we form a circle.”

There was a moment of hesitation, where Caleb briefly feared that Beau would walk away, and ignore him, and leave the mystery of Mollymauk and his haunting unanswered, but then she met his eyes, sat down, and closed her hand around his.

“Alright!” Jester said with more cheer than Caleb felt the situation really called for, reaching out for their hands and giving them both a quick squeeze. “Now, we can’t let go of each other’s’ hands, okay? If we do then the circle will break, and whatever spirit we end up talking to will leave, which won’t be good for anyone. And no one talk, please, not until Molly is here.” She took a deep breath, the candles casting their flickering, dancing light over her face, and shut her eyes. “ _Hello!”_ she called out, as though she was contacting someone over the telephone. “This is Jester, and I’m looking for Mollymauk Tealeaf! I’m here with Beau and Caleb, and we just wanted to see if you could maybe come join us for a bit? We just want to have a little chat, there’s no pressure- _ow_!”

Beau glared at Jester, and beneath the table Caleb felt her leg brush briefly against her own as she withdrew it from kicking Jester.

Jester rolled her eyes. “ _Fine_ ,” she amended, “there _is_ pressure to come talk to us, because Beau just kicked me under the table. But Caleb and I are really nice and super-friendly, you know! We just want to ask you some questions, that’s it! And look, we have your tarot cards, and I hung up some silks and put out some peacock feathers because Beau told me that you liked them, so this place should be really, really nice for you! So… yeah! Come talk to us, Molly! Thank you!”

Jester sat back a little, evidently content with what she had said, and the room lapsed into silence as they waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Minutes passed. Around his hand Caleb felt Beau’s fingers loosen, and then start to grow tight as the seconds dragged by, each one weighed down by expectation. At the back of his head Caleb almost fancied that he could hear the ticking of the grandfather clock in Tealeaf manor, counting out the passing seconds in the absolute, deathly silence. No one dared speak. No one dared move. It was only when several minutes had gone by with no indication of any sort of response that Jester finally spoke up, and shattered the silence.

“Oh,” she said quietly. The word seemed to linger, clinging to the silks that hung from the walls. Jester’s face fell, the corners of her mouth downturning. “I’m- oh, no, I’m really sorry, you guys. I thought this would work, I really did, it- all my books said this should work, I did everything right, I’m _sure_ I did-”

A breeze gusted through the room, making the candle flames dance and flicker, and Caleb felt something cold slip down his spine. He knew this feeling. He recognised what it meant.

“And,” Jester continued, not seeming to notice the shifting, swaying light, “And, I mean, we _have_ everything! We have his cards, and they must have been really important to him for him to keep them locked in a _wardrobe_ , and Beau brought the picture of him, and- and he’s not _here_!”

Caleb cleared his throat. Across the table from him, a single candle flamed waved once again, swaying back and forth as the breeze gusted over the hangings, sighing against the peacock feathers like a voice just at the edge of hearing. “Um,” he said quietly. Jester looked up at him, her lower lip trembling, and Beau fixed him with a suspicious glare. Caleb nodded to the candle. “I think he’s here,” he said. “This is- I think this is Mollymauk.” _I know this is Mollymauk_. How many times, now, had Caleb seen the candles flickering in a breeze that shouldn’t exist, had he felt the touch of the wind against his skin and heard soft voices whispering from out of the shadows? There was no doubt in his mind, despite how much his logical mind objected to everything about this situation. He knew this was Mollymauk. He knew that Mollymauk was here.

Across the table from him, Beau snorted. “Yeah, sure. Get fucked, Mr Widogast.”

“This is Mollymauk,” Caleb said again, more insistently. He didn’t let go of Beau or Jester’s hands, instead resigning himself to nodding at the candles again. “This, this is all- at the house, this is how he likes to communicate. He – please, Beauregard, do not give me that look, I know how this sounds but you must bear with me – he uses the breeze a lot to communicate. This is- this is him saying that he is here. This is him saying that he is present.”

As if on cue, the breeze gusted again. The flames flickered wildly, swaying like something half-alive, and the hanging silks surrounding them fluttered, whispering and murmuring as fabric rubbed against fabric, the sound soft and sibilant all at once. Caleb felt himself starting to smile, just barely. He _knew_ this pattern of the dancing flames, _knew_ the sound of the silks and the barely audible whispers murmuring against his skin. He’d barely been at the house for a week and yet they were already as familiar to him as Frumpkin was, settling alongside his skin and bone as though they had always been there.

“Mollymauk,” Caleb murmured quietly, the word for him and him alone. “Please. Let us speak to you.”

And then, between one breath and the next, a figure formed in the centre of the table. It was a ghostly figure, practically monochrome and flickering in and out of sight, much like how the flames of the candles were. It was a pale grey, looking almost as if it was formed of the same mist that embraced Tealeaf Hill, and it was in the form of a tiefling with curling, jewellery-hung horns, and an immaterial peacock inked upon an immaterial cheek, and dark hair just about reaching to his shoulders.

It was Mollymauk.

Beau gasped.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she whispered. “Fuck, fuck, _shit_ , gods, _Molly_.”

Mollymauk smiled. He shifted a little in place, his actions twitchy as though he were trying to figure out exactly what it was possible for him to do, and after a brief moment he raised a hand, giving Beau a short, lazy wave. _“Hey, Beau,”_ he said, and his voice was just as it had been in Caleb’s dream the night before, just as clear and just as certain and just as beautifully, gorgeously accented.

Beau gave a short sound like a stifled sob. “You fuckin’ asshole,” she said, but Caleb could see the tears shining in her eyes, could feel her hand squeezing tight enough around his own that he was briefly worried that her nails would draw blood. “You fuckin’- _gods_ , Molly, I can’t- you- what the _fuck_?!” Beau raised her head, turning to glare at Jester. “If you are- Jessie, if this is a fuckin’ trick, or a joke, or anything like that, I swear to the _gods_ I’m going to-”

“It’s not a trick!” Jester interrupted quickly, her eyes wide and earnest. “This is all just happening, okay? I don’t- the books said _something_ like this would happen, I’m not doing anything, you _know_ that, Beau! I wouldn’t do that to you!”

“But this shit doesn’t _exist_ ,” Beau snapped, keeping her gaze firmly trained on Jester. “Ghosts aren’t goddamn real, this wasn’t meant to actually _do_ anything-”

_“Hey!”_ Molly objected loudly. He twisted in place, his form passing through the table as though it wasn’t there at all, and quickly glanced over at Jester and Caleb, as though checking to see if they would have any objections.

For the briefest of moments, when his gaze met Caleb’s, Caleb could have sworn that he saw Molly wink.

_“Hey,”_ Molly said again, returning his attention to Beau. He lifted his hand, waving it in front of her face _._ Through it Caleb could see the candles on the far side of the table, could see the silk hangings and the items that adorned Jester’s shelves. _“I’m right here, see? I always told you that ghosts existed, you moron. You even had me read tarot for you one time. Don’t tell me that you don’t believe in this shit.”_

“I had you read my cards because you were tipsy and wouldn’t stop bugging me about it,” Beau said, her voice cracking slightly. “And then I- _”_

_“-And then you bet me money if I could ever give you any proper, ‘reliable’ evidence of ghosts or the ‘supernatural’,”_ Molly finished for her, rolling his eyes _. “And I told you that I absolutely would. So now, you owe me. Pay up.”_

Beau sobbed again, briefly and quietly. It was a quiet sound, barely audible even in the silence of the room, but it sounded almost happy, and when Beau lifted a hand to brush her eyes with the back of her wrist, Caleb could see that she was smiling beneath her tears. “You fuckin’ asshole,” she mumbled. “You fuckin’- _gods_ , Molly, you’re such a fucking dick, I hate you.”

“ _I hate you too_ ,” Molly replied easily, his eyes sparkling and fondness clear in his voice. “ _You’re the worst, and I loathe you with every fibre of my being, and I still don’t know how you roped me into being your friend, and I’m still deeply hurt and wounded that you chose to abandon me instead of saving my life.”_

Next to him, Caleb felt Beauregard grow still. He risked a glance at Mollymauk and then one at her, feeling her hand tighten around his own, and saw immediately that, whatever barb Mollymauk had just throw out as easily as breathing, it had struck deeper and more accurately than he could have expected. Beauregard’s face was pale, still stuck on the cusp between delight and grief and anger, and, after a long, chilly moment, she spoke.

“You fuckin’ asshole,” Beau said quietly. For a moment her jaw clenched, her hand twitching and flexing around Caleb’s as though she wanted to reach out for the unreal, immaterial form of Mollymauk, but she didn’t break the circle. “You fucking… you left me _alone_ , Molly! You and Yasha, you both up and fuckin’- you- she was meant to _protect_ you! She was meant to be the one looking out for you because I couldn’t, because I had to deal with my _fucking_ family-”

_“I know,”_ Molly said quickly. He leaned forwards, reaching out for Beauregard, but his hand stopped barely an inch from her face, and, as Caleb watched, his expression fell. “ _I know, Beau_ ,” he said again, his voice softer. “ _I didn’t- it wasn’t Yasha’s fault, you know. I promise you that_.”

“But she was meant to- she’s always-”

“ _She’s always looked out for me, yeah, I know, but she couldn’t- with this- it wasn’t-…”_ Molly trailed off into silence, chewing at his lip for a moment. “ _This was too much for her,_ ” he added quietly after a long, frozen moment. “ _This was… she did what she could, Beau. It wasn’t her fault.”_

“Why not?” Beau snapped, but beneath the anger Caleb could hear the tremulous hope and anxiety and longing, could hear how much she missed her friend. “Why not, Molly? She’s been able to get you out of shit so many times before. Why couldn’t she do it this one goddamn time, when it really mattered?”

_“It wasn’t- now, I don’t know everything that happened,”_ Molly warned her, _“but I know this. When I- when I died… that wasn’t an accident.”_

“Yeah, no shit,” Beau snapped, but Molly lifted a hand and she instantly fell silent.

“ _I don’t mean an accident in the manner of ‘oh, that poor boy, he fell and hit his head.’ What I mean is that everyone thought it was a bar brawl. I saw that in Caleb’s notes_.”

Caleb blinked. “You- _was_?”

_“I saw it in your notes,”_ Molly repeated, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and Caleb felt his stomach grow warm at the sight of it. Even ethereal, even immaterial and unreal, Mollymauk was still unspeakably beautiful. _“You and that cat of yours are the most interesting thing to happen in that house for_ ages _, you know. Is it really any kind of surprise that I was going to read over the shoulder of this dashingly attractive mystery man who’d suddenly showed up in my house, and who had a_ cat _?”_

Beau snorted from somewhere off to Caleb’s side, but Caleb didn’t look at her, feeling heat rising in his cheeks. _Dashingly attractive_. He- gods above, now was not the time to think about the fact that Mollymauk apparently found him to be _dashingly attractive_. He had questions to ask, had things he needed to know, but it was so, so hard to think about that with Mollymauk meeting his gaze the way he was, with his eyes shining like moonlight on water. It was hard to think about anything other than how Molly had appeared in his dream last night, and what his hands had felt like against Caleb’s skin, and it was only when Molly spoke up again, his words directed at Caleb, that Caleb managed to snap himself out of his daze.

“ _I read all that nonsense in the paperwork that dealt with my death,”_ Molly said. “ _The death certificate, and the other… the thing… what was it that you were reading, Caleb?”_

“The coroner’s report,” Caleb’s mouth answered for him. Molly smiled at him, quick and fleeting, and Caleb felt his heart trip. Gods, but Mollymauk was so, so beautiful.

“ _Thank you, love,”_ he said, and turned his attention back to Beau just as Caleb felt his face starting to flush red at the pet name. “ _But yeah, that. I read it, and it was absolute bullshit, the whole thing. Either the coroner was blind or they were lying through legal paperwork, which I admit is what most people do, but this was much worse than your standard bureaucracy.”_

“I know,” Beau said. She nodded over towards Caleb. “I’ve- I’ve already told him that it’s fake, I know, I found that out too. It’s fuckin- it’s all bullshit, apparently.”

“ _Was there an actual correct one? Did you see it?”_

Beau shook her head, sighing. “No,” she mumbled. “I couldn’t- I didn’t get the chance to go find it…”

Molly smiled again, but there was no humour to it. “ _But you know that my d- that it wasn’t quite how the report described, right?”_

Beau nodded. “Yeah,” she muttered. “Yeah, I know. But I- Molly, what the fuck actually happened? Like, I _know_ that you weren’t all fuckin’ beat up and shit, but what actually happened to you?” She shifted forwards, tugging on Caleb’s hand as she did so, and Caleb felt himself lean forwards too, just as Jester was doing across the table from him. “What _happened_ , Molly?”

Molly shrugged. “ _A bar fight,”_ he said quietly. “ _It was- I mean, they got that bit correct, at least. I saw that enough times when Caleb was reading my- the obituary, and all that. But I- it only started like that. It didn’t end that way?”_

“What do you mean?” Jester asked quietly, speaking up for the first time since the séance began.

“ _What I mean,”_ Molly continued, “ _is that it wasn’t- this wasn’t your regular bar fight. I’ve seen enough of those, maybe even instigated a few in my time for reasons I still can’t understand-”_

“They happened because you’re an asshole,” Beau interrupted, seeming to speak almost automatically, and Molly gave a gasp of mock-offense.

“ _How dare you, Beau, I am an absolute delight-”_

“You’re an asshole.”

There was a pause.

“… _I’m an asshole_ ,” Mollymauk agreed, a grin tugging at his mouth. “ _But I wasn’t being enough of an asshole for this, alright? Yasha can confirm that, and Fjord can confirm that, and everyone who was there who heard me can confirm that. I wasn’t looking for a fight, I just wanted to trade some friendly barbs and have a good evening_.”

Beau snorted again. “Your ‘friendly barbs’ have nearly got us kicked out of the pub before, Molly.”

“ _That’s true, but last time that happened I bought a round for everyone, and we all got tremendously drunk, and no feelings were harmed in the end,_ and _I left a hefty tip to apologise. I leave it up to you to do the actual fighting, Beau. But, that day, it seemed that someone else wanted to fight, and, well…”_ Molly trailed off, his face falling, and the sight of the tiefling suddenly looking so incredibly downcast struck Caleb like a punch to the gut. “ _He wouldn’t back down. He overheard something that Yasha and I said, or he said something that we took offense with, or something like that. I can’t remember.”_

_“_ Who was it?”

Molly shrugged. “ _I don’t know,”_ he said. “ _I didn’t recognise him, whoever he was, but I don’t- I can’t- my memory feels a bit odd these days, you know? Like, I can’t quite tell when people have been around, or when Caleb is in the house, or when someone else is there. People and times and places all get confusing and muddled up. I don’t think I knew this person, but I might have.”_ He fell silent for a moment, one hand fiddling absently with the cuff of his shirt, and then continued. “ _Either way, he wouldn’t back down. I tried to buy him a drink, smooth it over, just… take care of the situation, but it kept on escalating and eventually he was shouting at me about something and Fjord told us to take it outside because he didn’t want_ another _broken table while he was on shift.”_

Beau quirked a small smile at that. “I’m still not sorry about that. The asshole I threw through it had it coming.”

_“He did, but I also had to pay up to stop us all from getting banned from the pub for the rest of our lives.”_ Molly’s mouth twitched. “ _Although_ ,” he added, “ _I suppose that wouldn’t matter much to me, now._ _That asshole – it was like he was_ trying _to get us kicked out, you know? Like he knew all of my buttons to press to get me pissed off and angry, and then once we were outside he just- he…”_ Molly trailed off, looking down at his shirt. Even in his ghostly form, the spreading blood on his chest was clear to see – a dark, insidious stain that painted his incorporeal form like pitch.

_“_ He what?” Caleb asked softly. The words tripped off his tongue without him truly meaning them to, hanging in the air around the table like a snare waiting to tighten. “What did he do, Mollymauk?”

Molly raised his head, and met Caleb’s gaze.

_“I think he stabbed me,”_ Molly said quietly. He lifted his hands, pressing them against his semi-translucent chest, right over the eclipsing stain of his blood. “ _I think he- I don’t remember much, you know, but I’m pretty certain that he stabbed me. A few times, possibly. It was all- it happened so fast. One moment I was halfway to drunk, having a grand old time talking nonsense with Yasha, and then I was in an alley with some asshole sticking a blade in my chest, and I couldn’t see Yasha, couldn’t see_ anything _, and I-_ ”

“ _Molly_ ,” Beau said, her voice choked with tears, and with a thrill of fear, Caleb felt her hand fall slack around his own. “Molly, I’m sorry-”

“Beauregard, _don’t!_ ” Caleb warned, but before the warning left his mouth he watched as Beauregard lifted her hand, breaking the circle. For a single moment the image of Mollymauk remained, shimmering faintly in the flickering candlelight, and then, before anyone had the chance to react, he vanished.

For a moment, silence held the room in an absolute, frozen grip. Beyond the walls of Jester’s home, Caleb thought that he could faintly hear the sounds of the night that he had always expected at the house, but had never heard – he could hear the hooting of owls, the soft gusting of the wind, the small noises of other living things making their way through the night-darkened lanes.

He could not hear Mollymauk. Not anymore.

“Fuck,” Beau whispered after a long, awful pause. “I- _fuck_.” She lifted her head, tears shining on her cheeks, and looked over at Jester. “ _Jester_ ,” she snapped. “Bring him back.”

Jester shook her head. “I _can’t_ ,” she said. “I don’t- none of the books told me anything about contacting the same spirit again!”

“Bring him _back_!”

“I don’t know _how_!”

“Just- do that same shit again! You’ve already got all the stuff! Just contact him again!”

“I _can’t_ ,” Jester repeated desperately. “It’s- I can’t feel him here anymore, Beau! I could kind of feel him before I contacted him, you know, like the way you know that someone’s looking at you all weird, but I can’t feel that anymore! He’s not here anymore.”

“Then _where is he_?”

“He’s-”

“Back at the house,” Caleb said quietly. He let go of Jester’s hand, bringing his own hands together in his lap. He didn’t know where that certainty came from, didn’t know why he was so sure of that fact, but he was. _It’s like the brambles are protecting his grave_. “He- he must have gone back there. He is almost always at the house. It makes sense.”

“Then let’s fuckin’ _go_ ,” Beau said. She stood up jerkily from the table, shoving her chair back so hard that it screeched over the wooden floorboards. “Come _on_ , Jes, we just- we’ve gotta- he’s _there_ , he’s _here_ , we’ve gotta go talk to him, you can’t just bring my dead fuckin’ best friend back and then make me _lose him again!_ ”

Beau was trembling, Caleb saw, her hands curled into fists at her side as angry, painful tears ran down her cheeks, shining in the candlelight. Jester’s eyes were wide and worried, her expression uncertain, but she didn’t rise from the table, her gaze flickering from Beau to the cards on the table and back again.

“I can’t- that’s not- that’s not how séances work,” Jester said quietly. “I’ll- I’m going to need time to, like, recover, and so will Molly. It’s _effort_ , for both of us, you know? I have to pull him through and he has to come through and it’s really pretty tiring for both of us.”

“How long until you can do it again?” Beau demanded, and Jester shrugged.

“I don’t know. I’d have to check all of my books, and it kind of depends on Molly-”

“ _Fuck_.” Beau groaned, lifting a hand to her eyes as she started to pace back and forth. “So that’s it?” she asked, stopping in her steps and turning to look at Jester. “So you can’t- that’s it? You can’t speak to him again?”

Jester shook her head, the chains on her horns jingling in what was, for Caleb, a disconcertingly familiar way. “Not for a while, no. I’m sorry, Beau…”

“Alright,” Beau said. “ _Alright_.” She gave a sigh, shutting her eyes for a moment, and then she opened them, and turned to look at Caleb. “You,” she said. “Widogast.”

“… _Ja_?” Caleb said cautiously.

“If I can’t speak to Molly, then I might as well talk to you. There’s some shit I need to tell you.”

Caleb frowned. “ _Ja_?” he asked. “Like what?”

“Well,” Beau replied, her voice still just a little bit sharp. “For starters, I used to have your goddamn job.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be posted on **September 23rd!**


	9. Chapter 9

They tidied up the table in near-silence. Beauregard took one of the candles, moving around the room to touch the flame to the wicks of the other candles and bring light back into the room as Caleb helped Jester with clearing away the contents of the table. The crystal ball was removed and taken by Jester to some other room, while Caleb carefully wrapped the tarot cards back into their scarf and tucked them back into his briefcase. They felt cooler beneath his fingers than he had expected them to, as though they had been touched by frost, but he didn’t have time to linger on that thought, because, the moment the table was clear, Beau grabbed a seat, reached out, and slapped the tabletop next to her.

“Come on,” she said. “Sit down, Widogast.” Her voice was more stable now, no longer trembling with suppressed tears or shaking with barely-controlled anger, but it also wasn’t as sharp or as certain as it had been the first time they’d met. Caleb sat down, tugging his chair out to create some degree of separation between them as he did so. Even now, he wasn’t sure how to feel about Beauregard. Even now, he wasn’t sure if she was going to unexpectedly punch him or not. Beau glanced over at him and seemed to notice his slight wariness. She sighed. “Look, I’m not going to- I’m going to go off at you, alright? You can sit down, man. I’m not going to snap or punch you or whatever.”

Caleb made no comment on that. He hadn’t known Beauregard for very long, but he _had_ been rather concerned of the possibility of being punched the first time he met her, and was only marginally less afraid now. It helped, he felt, that Beau didn’t seem as angry as she had earlier, either. She seemed almost worn-out, as though the conversation with Mollymauk had drained all the anger and frustration out of her, leaving her with nothing more than a sharp, prickly layer of old, familiar hurt. She leaned forward in her chair as he turned to face her, her expression somehow becoming even more serious.

“You know the history of the house, yeah?” Beauregard asked. “You’ve read all the- all the documents you were given, right? I’m assuming they haven’t changed too much - Bryce probably gave you all the shit about the previous owners, like the people who lived there before Gustav and all that.”

“They… _ja_ , they did do that,” Caleb replied slowly, frowning. In all his time working for Bryce, he’d only encountered a few other people within the company who Bryce allowed to use let call them by their first name. To everyone else, always, they were Mx Feelid. “How do you know Bryce, though-”

“I’ll get to it,” Beau interrupted quickly. “That doesn’t- look, we’ve got some fuckin’ backstory bullshit to get through, so just shut the fuck up and let me talk, alright?”

Caleb, silently, raised his hands in acceptance and sat back in his chair, shooting a glance over at Jester. Jester pulled a slight face, giving a small shrug. She didn’t seem surprised by anything that Beau was saying, and Caleb could only assume, given how close they seemed, that she already knew everything that Beau was about to say, but she did seem slightly surprised that Beauregard was choosing to tell Caleb everything.

Beau nodded at him. “ _Thank_ you,” she said. “Now, I’m gonna assume that you’ve read all the shit that Bryce gave you already, partly because it’s literally your job and all, but mostly because you just look like the kind of guy who’ll read anything that he can get his hands on. I mean, I don’t know if you are, but you give me that impression, and I’m not normally wrong about shit like that. But, whatever. You’ve read the house history. You know it was owned by the Lionetts.” She paused, fixing him with a sharp look. “You _do_ know that, right?”

Caleb nodded.

“Yeah, I thought you would.” Beau lifted a hand, running it over her hair, and then sat back in her chair, almost as if she were bracing herself for something. “Well, what you probably don’t know is that I am one of them. One of the Lionetts. My name is Beauregard Lionett, which means that my family fuckin’ owned that goddamn house before they decided to piss off to Rexxentrum for trade and connections and all that bullshit. Gustav moved in after they left, obviously.”

For a moment, Caleb said nothing. He frowned a little to himself as he turned the new knowledge over in his mind, carefully inspecting it before setting it aside amongst the other facts he had been accumulating over the last few days. Strangely, in the wake of the séance and everything that had happened during it, even this did not feel like much of a revelation. It just seemed right. It seemed like something that Caleb already knew.

“Oh,” he said quietly. “I- oh. Alright then.”

Beau narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s it?” she asked. “’Oh?’ You’re not gonna, I don’t know, ask me why I’m not off living with my family and being a spoiled rich kid or whatever? You’re just going to accept this?”

Caleb shrugged. “I am sure that you have your own reasons, and I feel that you’re probably going to tell me soon enough. Frankly, Miss Beauregard, right now my concern is more with what you know about Mollymauk and how you know Bryce than anything to do with your connection to the house.” He wouldn’t lie and say that he wasn’t curious about how a Lionett had come to remain in Alfield after the house had been sold on, but he held his tongue. Right now, he could be patient. Right now, he needed to gather as much information as he possibly could, and it looked like Beau was going to provide that.

“…Fair enough,” Beauregard said after a short pause. She shrugged, continuing. “Well, anyway, I’m one of the Lionetts. Lived here for a while with my family before they moved out and Molly and Lucien and Gustav all moved in. That’s how I first met Molly, you know - Gustav and Molly and Lucien and all came down a few times while my parents were looking for buyers. Stayed in town for a few days, had a look around the house, talked about pricing and servants and who came with the house and their wages and if my parents were leaving behind the grandfather clock they got with the house or not, all that stuff. Gustav was up at the house a lot, and so were Molly and Lucien, but- well, I mean, they were kids, y’know? We were all kids. The only thing I gave a shit about then was if I could convince my parents _not_ to move, or if I couldn’t do that, figuring out how pissed off at me they’d be if I stayed behind. I’d made friends with Yasha pretty quickly after moving in and I didn’t want to lose her, and the house was cool, and it was better than fucking Kamordah, or Rexxentrum, or anywhere else. Like, I _finally_ had an actual goddamn friend for once. I didn’t want to lose that.”

“I can understand that,” Caleb said quietly. “I have not had many friends in my life. It is- I understand the importance of wanting to keep them close.”

“Yeah,” Beau muttered. “Yeah…” She paused for a moment, taking a few slow careful breaths. Her hand on the tabletop had clenched into a fist, bunching up the smooth purple velvet that Jester had adorned the table with for the séance. Eventually, she continued. “Yasha was my friend, and it took no time at all for Molly to become my friend, too. He was a little shit, and I was a little shit, and we got along like a house on fire, and by the second day he was there, we’d already managed to prank Lucien _and_ Molly had somehow discovered a brand new secret passageway in the house which I’d completely missed. I was pissed off about that because it was _my_ house and so _I_ should know all the secret passages, and I rubbed spiderwebs in his hair because of it, but it was still cool. I liked him. And he seemed to like me, and he liked Yasha, and those two were immediately besties, but it was alright because Molly and I were _also_ besties. We just… we worked. I’d known Yasha for maybe a couple of years at that point, and Molly for maybe two months, but I liked them. I fuckin’ loved them, actually.”

Beau paused, lifting a hand to scrub roughly at her eyes, and then dropped it again, leaving it to flex atop the table.

“But,” she continued, “I also didn’t want to move out. I wanted Molly to stay in Alfield, and I wanted his family to be around, but I didn’t want to leave. I was- I didn’t really _get_ how selling houses worked, you know? And, like, you’ve seen it. It’s a huge goddamn house. In my mind there should’ve been some way that Molly and his family could’ve moved in with us, and it all would’ve been great, and I _asked_ my mom and dad, but they were set on moving. And then they signed all the paperwork while I was hanging out with Molly one day, and next thing I knew they were telling me to start packing, because we were gonna be moving out.”

“I can’t imagine that went down well,” Caleb said, unable to stop himself from commenting, and Beau snorted.

“Hah, yeah, that’s one way of putting it. I fuckin’- gods, I fuckin’ _hated_ them right then, you know? Like, I’d finally found friends, and a place that was cool and fun, and my room was decorated just how I liked, and Yasha and I were always exploring the hill, and it was just _great_ , and then, suddenly, I was being yanked off back to some posh, stuck-up town where I’d have to wear prissy, frilly dresses, and be the perfect daughter, and have to do exactly what my parents told me to do for the rest of my life without ever having the chance to just be _me_. It was shit. I hated it. I hated _them_.” She looked up, meeting his gaze, her chin jutting out almost aggressively. “So when the time came for us to leave, I stayed behind.”

“ _How?”_ Caleb asked, his mind whirling. “You could not have- you couldn’t have been older than-”

“Yeah yeah yeah, shut up,” Beau snapped, glaring at him. “I was a kid, alright? I know that. But Molly was my best fucking friend in the entire world, and he and Yasha actually goddamn _listened_ to me and didn’t give a shit that I- that I wore suits, and didn’t care about fuckin’ expensive rotten grape juice and all that bullshit. Of course I wasn’t going to leave with my family if I could help it. I wasn’t going to be stuck with my dad for any longer than I absolutely had to be, not when he was still so _fucking_ disappointed that I wasn’t a son, and was then even more disappointed when I failed to be the ‘ideal’ daughter.”

“…Oh,” Caleb replied. “I- I see. Did you tell your parents that you wanted to stay behind?”

Beau nodded. “Oh, yeah. Told them right to their faces, told them that I was going to be staying in Alfield whether they liked it or not and that there was nothing they could do about it.”

“And what did they do?”

Beau smirked. “Dad gave me the address of the new house and told me to come running home when I got tired of being a little shit-head. Told me that he and Mom had had enough of my shit while I was living with them, and they’d had enough of me trying to get in the way of selling the house, and that if I _really_ loved the house that much I could stay in it with no one there to look after me, and see how I liked it.”

“Did they not- how- did they, um, do anything to help?” Caleb asked. He knew that he had been fortunate that his parents, while they lived, had been both kind and caring towards him, loving him and helping him to achieve his goals, and he was equally well aware that not everyone had such pleasant parents, but he would have thought, given Beauregard’s family, that they would have done _something._ What, exactly, he wasn’t sure, but based on what little he’d heard of them the idea of them forcing her to accompany them didn’t sound at all implausible. If anything, it sounded even more likely given their status and connection. Wild, unruly children and relatives could bring shame to a whole family, tainting their reputation and ruining any chance of future connections and business dealings were the stain damaging enough. There was a reason, after all, why the worst infractions were kept hidden from the wider world.

Beau merely shrugged at Caleb’s question. “Not really,” she answered. “Well… Dad _did_ give me some money before he and Mom left. He told me that it was enough to get a train to Rexxentrum and that I could come back whenever I felt like I’d learned my lesson. Fuck, but he gave me a goddamn printed copy of the train schedule right before he and Mom drove off, too, just in case I wanted to leave in the next hour or whatever.”

Caleb couldn’t look away. “And what did you do?” he asked quietly.

“I went to the pub with Yasha and celebrated my new freedom,” Beau replied promptly. “We were underage but the barman was cool, and even if he’d said ‘no’, I’d stashed some bottles from my family’s wine reserves in some bushes by the house. I was going to have a good fuckin’ time in Alfield while waiting for Molly to move in, and no one was going to stop me. Not my parents, or the barman, or anyone, and then Molly _did_ move in after a couple of months, and you know what?”

Caleb tilted his head. “What?”

“It was _fucking amazing_.” For the first time since he had met her, Caleb saw Beauregard truly, properly smile. It spread across her face slowly, seemingly without her notice, and in that moment, Caleb thought he could see Beau as Mollymauk had once seen her – bright and mischievous and whip-smart and impish, and enjoying her life with her two best friends. He could imagine it so clearly – a much younger Beauregard, clothing a bit muddy and a bit scruffy from climbing all over the hill, exploring the house and the lands around it with Mollymauk at her side. He could see Beau’s brashness, her boldness, could see Molly’s excitement and enthusiasm and his encouragement for Beau, and behind them all, he could imagine the figure of the still-unknown Yasha, watching on quietly as her friends got into all sorts of trouble before wading in to pull them out of it. The figure in his imagination had no particular features of characteristics, given Caleb’s lack of knowledge as to what she looked like, but in his head she was tall, watching on with a faint, fond smile on her face.

Caleb smiled, too. “I can imagine that it would have been,” he said quietly. “Molly and Yasha must have been good friends to you.”

“They were the _best_ ,” Beau replied, still smiling. “Like, while I was waiting for Molly to show up and move in, Yasha and I crashed together, and then when Molly _did_ arrive and found out that I was sort of, y’know, _homeless_ and all, he went and spoke to his dad about it. I don’t know how much he told him, but Gustav was a really cool dude. He kind of adopted me, actually. Not officially, you know, not properly, because that would involve getting a fake birth certificate and all that stuff, and while he definitely knew some real fuckin’ shady people from his time at the carnival, I don’t think he wanted to do it.” Beau shrugged, casually enough to imply that she may not have been quite as opposed as Lord Gustav was to the idea of it. “But I stuck around the house. Got given a room in the servant’s quarters, joined Molly and Lucien for their tutoring sessions, kept up with my reading and writing and geography and arithmetic and Elvish and all that. It was kind of like living with Mom and Dad, except _way_ less stressful.”

“Did you ever contact your parents?”

For a few moments, Beau was silent.

“A few times,” she said eventually, averting her gaze. She leaned back a bit, crossing her arms over her chest. “I- yeah, a few times. Jester, um… Jessie and Gustav kind of convinced me.”

“I just thought that you should let your parents know that you weren’t _dead_ ,” Jester interjected, rolling her eyes. “Like, I message my Momma _all the time_. It’s not a bad thing to do, you know-”

“Hey, they were the ones who left their fucking _kid_ in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere,” Beau interrupted, turning to glare at Jester, but there didn’t seem to be any real anger in her eyes. As best as Caleb could tell, all there was was a sort of burned-out, time-worn, exhausted bitterness, more born of habit than of conscious thought. “They were the ones who thought that was alright. I know that I was a little shit as a kid, but loads of kids are, and they were shit parents to me in return. If they’d wanted to know if I was alright, they should have come back and checked on me. Besides, I’m _glad_ that they never showed their faces again.”

“It’s still nice to let them know that you’re alive,” Jester chided. “What would have happened if you’d got injured, or _died_?”

“I got injured loads of times,” Beau said dismissively. “Even when they still lived here. Like that time when a cart knocked into me and I broke my wrist. They fussed over me for a bit, and took me a doctor and all that, but I think Dad in particular was mostly, like… I don’t know, almost _pleased?_ Like, not pleased that I was injured, but that there’d been some sort of consequence for my actions. He was also pretty pleased that it stopped me from climbing everything.”

“You still could have died,” Jester repeated stubbornly, and Beau groaned.

“Yeah, fine, alright, _maybe_ I could have died. But I didn’t, alright? I didn’t die, and I didn’t get any more injured than normal, and it was all a good fuckin’ time for many, many years.”

Caleb frowned. “How many years?” he asked quietly, and Beau shrugged.

“I don’t know. Like, maybe five? Maybe more? It was good, though.” Beau blinked, her words softening. “It was really good. Molly and Yasha… they were like my siblings, Molly especially. Gods, he’s- he was such a little _shit,_ you know, like a total asshole, but he was the fuckin’ best, and Yasha was like a big sister to both of us. It was a really good time. Sometimes I’d crash with Yasha if I didn’t want to stay at the house, and that- that was _freedom_ , you know?” Beau asked. She lifted her head, meeting Caleb’s gaze, and, just for a moment, Caleb thought that he understood. He thought that he understood the freedom that Beauregard so desperately wanted, so desperately _needed_ , that she’d never had with her own family. “It was freedom,” she repeated. “I didn’t have to _be_ anyone except myself. I could wear whatever the fuck I wanted, and no one cared. I gave Molly some of my old dresses, and he gave me some of his old suits, and we both wore them until we were too big for them, and then he got me a suit made for my birthday, and we went out and got absolutely trashed at the pub, and it was _good_. I didn’t have to worry about what my family thought because they weren’t there, and they never bothered to send letters or check in with me. Life was good. Life was really, really good.”

Caleb felt his skin prickle. Beau’s tone had dropped towards the end of her speech, her words becoming slower and heavier. Caleb knew what her tone was implying. He knew the timeline of events. He knew what was coming. He swallowed, quietly clearing his suddenly dry throat. “And- and then…?”

Beau looked up at him. In the soft light granted by the candles, he thought he could see tears shining bright in her eyes, sparkling and glinting but still unshed. “And then Molly died,” she said, her words quiet, and Caleb felt ice slip down his spine. “And so did Yasha. Because for some awful, stupid, _shitty_ fucking reason, some asshole in a pub killed my two best friends, and everything went to shit.”

This was the part of his job that Caleb had always found the hardest, and now was no different. He was an expert at sorting through paperwork, could read faster than almost anyone else in the company, but _this_ , the intimate, personal process of dealing with grief, of knowing what to say and how to comfort… it was something that he had always lacked, and something that he had never truly learned outside of a handful of scripts for certain situations. They worked well most of the time, giving him polite, respectful phrases that appeased most grieving family members, but this grief, the grief that Beauregard was carrying, was different to any grief that Caleb had seen before. It was older, heavier, aged and weighed down with years and turned bitter by a sullen anger at the simple lack of knowledge or reasoning. There was no reason for Mollymauk to be dead. There was no knowledge of why it had happened. It just had, and it had never been answered, and Mollymauk, just like his house, had been left to fade from memory, until the hill rose up to consume the bones of the house and swallow them both down to darkness.

Before him, Beauregard was still speaking. Caleb suspected that she hadn’t stopped the whole time he had been thinking, but he didn’t think he had missed too much that was important. It sounded to him like Beau was talking about travelling to Rexxentrum in the wake of Gustav’s death, returning to her parents with some sort of plan in mind.

“I was going to learn everything I could,” Beau was saying. “I was gonna- I’m smart, right? And I knew that if I wanted to look at Gustav’s paperwork and try and figure out if someone had it out for Molly, that he’d been keeping quiet then I’d need some, like, legal training, and reason to go rooting through his shit, and I’d need an excuse to give to the town archives and stuff like that. And I knew that Rexxentrum is good for legal stuff, and all that, so I- I dug out the little piece of paper I’d been holding onto all those years, and I wrote a letter to my parents.”

Caleb felt his eyes widen. “What did it say?”

“It asked if I could move back in with them,” Beau said, her voice barely above a sneer. “I told my dad I was turning over a new leaf, wanted to make something of myself. I told him that- that being all homeless and shit here in Alfield taught me so much about the world and about how lucky I am – which, I mean, it kinda did, but that wasn’t the _point_. I told him that I was going to try and get a proper job, and he wasn’t even pissed off that I wasn’t going to be taking over the family business, because it turned out that while I was here they had a son, just like they’d always wanted, and just- yeah, didn’t fuckin’ bother to let me know, I guess. They could’ve at least sent a letter to the house or something.”

“They didn’t know you were there, Beau,” Jester said wearily, but Beau barrelled right on.

“ _Anyway_ ,” she continued, “I figured that if I wanted to know what had happened to Molly, I’d need some way to look at his records. And, like, I’m pretty sneaky, and I know a lot of people here, but sometimes people are real up-tight about legal shit, and I needed to- I needed to know what had happened. I needed to know everything, because something didn’t feel right to me, and not to toot my own horn, but I’m pretty goddamn intuitive about shit like this. So I got a job at Bryce’s firm.”

Caleb gaped. “… _How_?”

Beau shrugged. “Pretty easily,” she replied. “I marched right into the office, told the guy at the desk that I could read really fuckin’ fast and pick information up just as quickly, that I wasn’t great with people but that I was aces with paperwork, and that I wanted a job. They hired me pretty much the same day. Not for fancy shit, you know, just for grunt work, but when they found out that I used to live in Alfield they sent me here to look after Gustav’s stuff. They figured that I’d have connections that could help.”

“And did you?”

“… I had a few.”

“Cali at the morgue,” Caleb murmured quietly, remembering Beau’s earlier comment, and Beau nodded.

“Cali at the morgue,” she confirmed. “And Deuces, and Fjord, and Nott, and a few others.”

Caleb frowned. “Who is- who is Nott?”

“Veth Brenatto,” Beau said, which didn’t clarify anything. “We all call her Nott, though. She runs Brenatto & Co Grocers with her husband and kid. She used to do food deliveries up to the house, so she overheard some stuff from the servants and house workers. She’s also, uh… she’s pretty handy with lockpicks. And climbing. And getting around places without being noticed and finding when boxes have got, like, fiddly paint traps in them or whatever if you don’t open them with the proper key. Shit like that. Don’t ask me why she is, and don’t ask me how I know that either.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Caleb replied. After everything that he had just learned, and everything that he had just experienced, discovering that the owner and manager of the local grocers was well-skilled in breaking into places was really the least of his concerns. If anything, it was just useful information to know. “Please, Beauregard, continue.”

“Yeah, well, anyway… I moved back in with my parents. I started working for Bryce, had all my training, and got myself shipped back to Alfield on business. I started at the town archives, figured I’d work my way up to going back up to the house, but then I ran out of stuff I could collect in the village and I walked right up to the base of the hill and I saw the house up at the top, and all the weeds growing in the road, and I felt the mist and I couldn’t- I _couldn’t_ -”

“Beau,” Jester murmured quietly, reaching out for Beau’s hand across the table. Caleb half-expected her to flinch away from it, to snatch her hand up, but she didn’t. Instead, as Caleb watched, she turned her hand palm-up, letting Jester’s fingers slide between her own. “You don’t have to tell him all of this…”

Beau sighed quietly, all the fight seeming to go out of her at the touch of Jester’s fingers against her own. “I _do_ ,” she mumbled quietly. “I do, Jessie. I want to- I need to find out what happened to Molly, alright? You know that’s important to me.”

“I know, I know, I know it’s super important to you, Beau. I’m not going to argue with you about that. I’m just saying that maybe Caleb doesn’t have to hear _everything_.”

The corner of Beau’s mouth quirked up in a smile. “Maybe not,” she admitted, “but I figure it can’t hurt. He’s the one with all the- all the papers and shit, now. It’s only thanks to him that I even got to- that I even got to talk to Molly at all.” She lifted her head, looking directly at Caleb as she continued speaking. “I’ve been trying to figure this out for years, and I got nowhere. All I found out was that Molly didn’t die by accident, and I already knew that. And then you show up, all clean-faced and shiny, and inside of a fuckin’ _week_ you somehow manage to get it so that I can actually talk to my dead best friend, even though you said earlier that you don’t believe in ghosts at all. I’m not going to lie and say that I like you, because we both know that that’s total horse crap, but you’ve got… you’ve got some skills. You apparently don’t believe in ghosts, but you still got Molly to show up, and right now that’s enough for me.”

Caleb looked down at his hands, fidgeting awkwardly with his jacket. “I _didn’t_ believe in ghosts,” he correctly quietly. “But that has… _ja,_ that has changed. I have- at the house, there have been some strange events.”

“Ooh, like what?” Jester asked, and Caleb shrugged. For reasons that he couldn’t hope to describe, he didn’t _want_ to tell Jester and Beauregard everything that had been happening at the house. The reasons for not wanting to share the events of the previous night were, he felt, extremely apparent, but beyond that he had no good reason to _not_ inform them. They would not think that he was mad. They would not judge or doubt what he had seen. They were all on the same page here. They were all looking for Mollymauk, and seeking to uncover the truth of the matter.

And yet.

And yet, Caleb didn’t want to share this. Those moments up at the house, where the breeze brushed against the back of his neck in a sigh and trailed along the length of his arm to twine with his fingers… those were _his_. They belonged to him, and they belonged to Mollymauk, and no one else. The sight of Mollymauk in the mirror above the fireplace in the dining room was his. The sound of Mollymauk’s voice spoken through the creaking of drawers and the shifting of shadows was his.

The feeling of Mollymauk’s hands against his waist, and of Mollymauk’s lips against his forehead, and the sound of his name on Mollymauk’s tongue, turned to liquid silver by his voice… those were his, and his alone, and they always would be.

Caleb shifted in his seat. “Like… I have, um, I have seen things, at the house. I have- my cat, Frumpkin, sometimes purrs and rubs up against nothing the same way he would with me. And I have heard whispers in the hallways, and seen the candles flicker when there should not be a breeze, and I have- I have…”

“You’ve _what?”_ Jester prompted, and, when Caleb answered, his words were spoken in a whisper.

“I have seen him in mirrors,” he replied quietly. “Mollymauk. I have seen him in mirrors. He doesn’t speak, or move, he just- he watches me.” Absently he lifted a hand, touching it to his own chest where he had so often seen the bloodstain on Mollymauk’s. “It is as if he is curious about me. Sometimes, I think I can feel him watching over my shoulder when I am reading. He seems interested in some of the letters that I have found.”

“Yeah?” Beauregard asked. “What were the letters about.”

“Oh, all manner of things. Correspondence between Gustav and his friends, letters of business, house repairs, some letters concerning Lucie-” He paused abruptly, cutting his words short. That was something he’d meant to ask. “…Beauregard?”

“Yeah?”

“What was Mollymauk’s relationship like?” Caleb asked cautiously. “With his… with his brother? What was Lucien like?” He wasn’t entirely sure of where the question was coming from. He wasn’t entirely sure of why he was asking it. It didn’t feel like it should be important, given all the information he’d gathered so far, but, for some reason, he wanted to know. He wanted to know from someone with first-hand experience who wasn’t Caduceus what Lucien was like. Caduceus’ information was interesting, certainly, but it was always bundled up with ghosts and spirits and the same amount of calmness with which he always spoke, making it impossible for Caleb to tell if anything that Caduceus remarked upon was truly unusual. From what Caduceus had said so far, in fact, Lucien seemed exactly how all of Caleb’s preparatory notes had presented him – as a calm, well-mannered, quiet sort of individual, interested in business and books. Even in the paintings and portraits, he seemed like the inverse of his brother. Where Mollymauk was all bright colours and loud patterns, adorning himself with tattoos and jewellery alike, Lucien’s style leaned more towards Caleb’s mode of dress, full of respectable, neutral tones and dark colours.

For a moment Beauregard opened her mouth, looking as though she was about to answer, but then she shut it, pausing for a moment as though gathering her thoughts before finally speaking up.

“Lucien was – _is_ , really, I guess, I doubt he’s dead – really, uh, quiet,” Beau answered eventually, her words slow and thoughtful. She looked back at Caleb, her gaze inspecting him from head to toe, and then she nodded towards him as she continued to speak. “Like, nerdy, book-quiet you know? Kind of like you. He always paid attention in lessons when Molly and I were goofing off. Lost his temper a couple of times, shouted at us to behave and stop flicking bits of paper at him, but mostly he was just quiet. Real studious. I actually got on kind of well with him, too, y’know. I kinda- the house had a really good library when we moved in, and Dad added to it and then left a lot of it behind, and then _Gustav_ added to it even more, and a couple of times actually Lucien and I had, like… not quite _study_ sessions in there, but you get the idea. Molly would go out on the town, or he’d hang out with Yasha, and Lucien and I would find cool books to read, and then whenever I got bored, I’d wander off and find Molly. But I liked looking for properly cool books, and Lucien preferred the really dry, boring shit about running businesses that I already knew.”

Caleb nodded slowly. “I take it your parents taught you how to run a business?”

“Yeah, among other things. I like to think I taught myself all the more important stuff, though,” Beau added with a smirk. “Lucien sometimes came to me for help or advice when he didn’t get something, though, which was cool. He was definitely way too invested in all that shit, though. You’d probably have got on pretty well with him.”

For reasons Caleb couldn’t hope to describe, something about that statement sent a shiver up his spine. He hunched forwards a little more, his hand flexing against his thigh. He didn’t like that, and he didn’t know why. He didn’t like Beau claiming that he would have got on better with Lucien than he would have with Mollymauk, even though, logically, it should be the truth. From everything he’d learned, from everything he’d uncovered, Lucien was much more his type of person than Mollymauk was. He was calm, and quiet, and motivated and organised and sensible enough to start making business connections early on. He was reasonable. He was bookish. He was the kind of person Caleb tended to become friends with.

He was the kind of person Caleb tended to develop feelings for.

Caleb remembered the touch of cool hands to his waist, and the sight of a peacock tattoo turned to living jewels by the sunlight, and the sound of his name on Mollymauk’s tongue, and he shivered. He should like Lucien more. He should like the sensible, reasonable, studious, _alive_ Tealeaf twin more.

But he didn’t.

Beyond the walls of Jester’s home, owls called quietly as they set about their hunting, their voices breaking the still night air in a way that they never did up on the hilltop. It had only just been a week or so and yet already Caleb was accustomed to the absolute silence that had so suffocated him when he’d first arrived. He was accustomed to the silence, and to the solitude, and he was accustomed, despite everything he thought he knew about himself, to the half-present sound of Mollymauk’s voice that the breeze spoke with. He was accustomed to Mollymauk. He was drawn to Mollymauk.

He liked Mollymauk a good deal more than he should.

“As for how Molly and Luci got on,” Beau continued, unaware of the whirling thoughts in Caleb’s head, “well… I mean, they bickered and squabbled, but all siblings do that, right? They got on some of the time, and Molly was definitely pretty fond of him for a good while, what with them being brothers and all, but… yeah, I don’t know, I never had siblings around to compare them to.” She frowned slightly, lifting a hand to scratch at her chin. “They were just… they were brothers, I guess? Kinda rich brothers who sometimes just got upset about kind of dumb shit, like when Lucien got pissed off at Molly when he found out that Molly had been inventing drinking songs down at the pub, but mostly they got on well enough, at least from what I could see. Lucien got a little distant in the— a few years ago, though, especially when he found out that Molly was going to get the house and he was going to get Gustav’s money and all that. I thought he’d would be happy about it, seeing how he kept on fuckin’ off to Rexxentrum and all, but apparently not. He got all extra focused on his business stuff and didn’t speak to me or Molly as much. He seemed kind of annoyed at Molly from time to time, too. I overheard him arguing with Gustav about something one time, and I swear Lucien mentioned Molly when he was shouting, but I couldn’t say for certain what they were arguing about. But… yeah, mostly they were just brothers.”

Caleb nodded slowly. That seemed to fit with what he had heard. “And… and how about Mollymauk and the rest of the village. Was there anyone there that may have…?”

Beau shook her head. “No,” she replied immediately. “No, dude, Caleb, I’ve already told you- the asshole who killed Molly, he wasn’t from here.”

“I know,” Caleb hastened to add, “I know, Beauregard, I heard that. It was more… I was wondering if anyone-”

Jester gasped, cutting Caleb’s words off. “ _Caleb_!” she exclaimed. “You don’t think someone _wanted_ him to _kill_ Molly, do you?”

Caleb shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t- right now, Jester, I do not know much at all. I do not know the people in this town. I do not- I do not know Mollymauk. Anything could have happened. That’s why I’m asking.”

“It could have happened,” Beau echoed quietly, not looking up at them. “It- yeah, I mean it’s a possibility, but I don’t- everyone here loved Molly,” she continued, her voice growing softer with every word. “ _Everyone_ loved Molly. He was a shit, and he fucked up plenty of times, and got into trouble, but he was- he was lovable, you know? He was _nice_. He over-tipped like crazy and helped little old ladies cross the street and played with the kids and showed off all these cool juggling tricks that Gustav had taught him and he was _good_. He told me once that he always wanted to leave a place better than he found it, even if that was just tidying up a table a little bit or slipping some money somewhere for someone to find later. No one would have wanted him dead. No one would have tried to kill him. They couldn’t have.”

Caleb nodded to himself, chewing absently on his lower lip. “Alright,” he said softly. “Thank you, Beauregard. And… I’m sorry.”

“We’re going to figure this out,” Beau said quietly. “We’re going to- we need to figure this out. _I_ need to figure this out, but for whatever fuckin’ reason, it seems I’m going to need your help to do it, because Molly doesn’t seem to want to show up for me.”

“Truth be told, I do not know why he is appearing to me, either,” Caleb muttered, twisting his hands together. His own skin was warm beneath his fingertips, not cool the way Mollymauk’s breeze was, and some small, unnoticed part of him missed the coldness of Molly’s touch. “I do not- I know that he seems to be fond of my cat, and that he- that he thinks…” He trailed off, swallowing. He’d heard what Molly had said earlier. They’d all heard it. But even now, Caleb had no idea if Mollymauk had been serious with his compliment or not. He didn’t know him well enough for that.

But Beauregard did.

“He seems to be fond of _you_ ,” Beau said quietly and, to Caleb’s surprise, he could hear no annoyance in her words. “He said earlier that he thinks you’re, y’know, hot or whatever, which is frankly pretty in-keeping with what I know of Molly’s taste in guys, but honestly if he was just going to show up for any hot guy then he would’ve been seen way more than he has been.” She shook her head, drumming her fingers against her leg. “Nah. He properly likes you, gods know why. You’ve got his attention, you and that cat that he mentioned earlier.”

“Frumpkin,” Caleb mumbled as, across the table, Jester gave a small gasp.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. She leaned forwards, making Caleb lean back as she neared him. “That’s right! Molly said that you have a cat! Can I see him? Is he cute?”

“He is, uh, he is up at the house,” Caleb stammered. He hadn’t been expecting Jester’s immediate enthusiasm, but he supposed that it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to him. He’d only known her for a short time, but he’d already come to realise that were Beau seemed to mostly be comprised of sullen annoyance and anger, Jester was mostly comprised of pure enthusiasm and energy. Caleb turned his head, and gestured vaguely in the direction of the house. “I do not- you did not seem very eager to approach the house when we first met, but I suppose that I could bring him down to the town. I do not think he would enjoy it very much, though.” _And_ , part of Caleb’s brain added, _he is keeping Molly company._

Jester’s face fell. “ _Aww_. I can’t believe you have a _cat_ that I can’t meet.”

“There’s loads of cats here, Jessie,” Beau said, frowning. “Just go out and befriend one of them.”

“It won’t be the _same_ , Beau! I want to meet the cat that stopped Molly from being all sad and upset and creepy and _weird_.” Jester paused, and then added, “Well, weirder than he used to be. All spooky. You know what I mean!”

“I do,” Beau agreed quietly. “I- yeah, Jes, I get it.” She sighed, scrubbing a hand over her face. “ _Fuck_. I don’t know what the fuck is going on with Molly, but I- I _need_ to know what happened to him.” She looked up at Caleb, her grey eyes wide in the dim candlelight. “You understand, right? You get it?”

Caleb nodded. He did. He absolutely did. The prickling sense of unease, of uncertainty, that had been present ever since he had first arrived at the house was stronger now, more certain and more apparent, but it also felt more directed and focused. He was no longer made uncomfortable by the house. He was no longer made uncomfortable by the silence of the hill, or the whispers of the breeze, or even by glimpses of purple in the age-tarnished mirrors scattered throughout the house. Those were all normal now. They were to be expected. They were _comfortable_.

The uncertainty of Mollymauk’s death was not.

At the back of his mind, Caleb remembered feeling Mollymauk’s hand against his cheek. He remembered shadows reaching out to grab at him, remembered Mollymauk’s warning, remembered Mollymauk telling him that _he_ had been the one trying to scare Caleb off. Whether there was another presence in the house, or whether Mollymauk was alone, or whether Molly could control the shadows or the mist or where exactly he fell on the plane between life and death, Caleb didn’t know, but he didn’t need to. All he needed, right now, was to find out how Mollymauk died.

All he needed, right now, was to find out who was responsible, and why.

“I do,” he said quietly. “I- _ja,_ I do, I understand. I need to- I still need to finish fully exploring the house, but I have access to everything there,” Caleb added, his mind already whirling. “I can let you know of anything that I find. If you can bring me the correct coroner’s report, or even just find some way to confirm me for how- how Mollymauk died, then that would be useful.”

Beau nodded. “Yeah, sure, I can do that.” She reached out across the table, holding out a hand, and Caleb took it immediately. There was no hesitation in his mind now. There was no distrust of Beauregard. What they wanted, what they _both_ wanted, was the exact same thing.

They both wanted to know what had happened to Mollymauk Tealeaf.

“For Molly,” Beau said, her hand clasped around Caleb’s, and Caleb nodded.

“ _Ja_ ,” he replied quietly. “For Molly.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art at the end of this chapter was done by the ever-wonderful [fswrites](https://twitter.com/fswrites)!
> 
> The next chapter will be posted on **October 2nd!**


	10. Chapter 10

When Caleb returned to the house on Tealeaf hill that night, it was to find it as silent as it had ever been. Caduceus dropped him off at the gates with a quiet wish of a good night that Caleb automatically returned, but his mind wasn’t paying attention to the words that he uttered, his gaze entirely fixed on the house before him. It stood at the crown of the hill silhouetted against the stars behind it, moonlight shining weakly off the glass panes of the windows. With the stone and brick bleached white by the moonlight, it reminded Caleb oddly of a ribcage, long since picked clean by carrion birds. It looked still and sombre and utterly, entirely empty. There was no face of a long-dead tiefling watching him from a window. There were no calls of hunting owls up here on the hilltop. There was just Caleb, and the house, and it felt emptier than it ever had.

Quietly, Caleb let himself inside. Frumpkin greeted him by the door, winding around his ankles and mewing plaintively until Caleb refilled his food bowl in the kitchen, but Caleb didn’t waste any time making food for himself. He wasn’t hungry. He was only tired, in the bone-deep way that he only experienced after weeks or months of work and stress, as though the séance earlier had sapped him of what energy he normally had. He scratched Frumpkin behind the ears as the cat ate and then ascended the stairs to his bedroom, hiding a yawn behind his hand. The floorboards creaked beneath his feet, undercutting the steady ticking of the clock, but the sounds that had once been ominous and unsettling to Caleb were almost comforting, now. They were familiar. The room, when he opened the door, was familiar. The moonlight was familiar, and the faded hangings were familiar, and everything about the room made him feel at peace, as though he had been back in his own flat in Rexxentrum and not in some strange, abandoned house on a hill overlooking a town in the middle of nowhere. He changed quickly, making sure to leave the door ajar for Frumpkin to join him, and then, with a mind full of thoughts of Mollymauk, Caleb climbed into bed, and let himself be caught up by slumber.

Caleb did not dream that night. He woke in the morning with no memories of the night, no lingering remnants of dreams caught up in his eyelashes like spider silk, and no heat in his body save for that which the blankets provided. He’d slept calmly, peacefully, and though he knew he should be grateful for the rest after the exhaustion resulting from the previous evening’s conversation, some part of him couldn’t help but be disappointed. He hadn’t seen Mollymauk since the séance, and yet he already found himself almost missing him. He’d seen Mollymauk the previous day, both in his immaterial form at the table and around the house, and he’d dreamed of him in a way he rarely dreamed of anyone only the previous night, and yet here he was, longing for a glimpse of purple that shouldn’t even exist.

He barely saw Mollymauk throughout the day, either. Caleb rose and dressed, making himself breakfast and feeding Frumpkin before returning to his now diminishing stacks of paperwork. He read and filed and took notes that seemed relevant, and, periodically, he caught himself looking up at the mirror hanging on the wall opposite him, hoping to catch sight of a glimpse of purple. On a few occasions he did, seeing Molly looking back at him through the barrier of the glass, and once in a while he felt the breeze drifting around his neck and stroking along his arms, but it felt weaker, now, as though the séance had somehow worn out what limited energy Mollymauk’s spirit possessed. He wondered if that was something that could happen, and resolved to ask Caduceus when he saw him next. For the most part, though, the day passed as so many other days in Caleb’s life had, full of paperwork, and solitude, and silence. Eventually Caleb retreated to bed, finding his thoughts, as they so often had throughout the day, returning to Mollymauk like a needle drawn to a magnet, but he didn’t try to push those thoughts away. It felt like there was no point to that, now. Mollymauk had woven himself through Caleb’s mind as surely as if he had been there from the very beginning, insinuating himself into Caleb’s thoughts like ink dispersing through water.

Caleb shut his eyes and, as sleep came to overtake him, felt a dream rising in his skull like pitch-dark water.

When he dreamed, he dreamed of Mollymauk.

The setting, when the dream settled, was familiar to him. He found himself standing once again in his bedroom, – in _Mollymauk’s_ bedroom – but he was accustomed enough to dreams now to recognise one when it laid claim to his sleeping mind. He could feel the strange lightness to his body, the odd delay and clouding to his thoughts, but, as in his last dream in this room, there was no fear to be found. The shadows, clinging to the corners and the undersides of chairs and furniture, were not unnatural. The breeze, when it gusted around his neck and played with the hairs of his short ponytail, was not some impossible wind, but merely a draught let in through a half-open window. As in his last dream, there was nothing strange or unusual to the setting.

And, as in his last dream, Mollymauk was there, too.

Once again, Mollymauk was sat in the chair before his vanity, his tail curled loosely around one of the legs of the chair. He wasn’t shirtless this time, much to Caleb’s disappointment, but his shirt hung loose from his shoulders, the fabric slipping off his skin and fluttering in the gentle breeze that came in through the half-open window. The wind was warm, but Caleb didn’t care to look outside to establish what season his dream seemed to be taking part in. He didn’t want to look away from Mollymauk. He could see the lines of the peacock feathers inked into Mollymauk’s skin, could follow them down the curve of his jaw and the column of his throat until they disappeared beneath his shirt, and some still half-slumbering part of his mind looked at those feathers, and wondered what it would be like to trace the path of them all the way down Molly’s body, with fingertips and tongue alike. He wondered how far they went, how much of Mollymauk’s body was given up to ink and artwork. He’d seen the peacock, and the undying flowers that bloomed across his shoulders and down his arms, but he’d been too distracted previously to properly notice the myriad of tattoos that covered Mollymauk’s skin. He was still too distracted now, if he was honest. As he watched, Mollymauk shifted a little, the motion shifting through the muscles of his back, and Caleb must have made some sort of noise because a moment later his head snapped up, and he met Caleb’s gaze in the mirror of his vanity.

“ _Caleb!_ ” Molly said, sounding delighted. He turned to look at him, a wide smile crossing his face that made Caleb’s heart skip a beat in his chest. He’d never seen that smile before. He’d seen something similar to it at the séance, but his memories of his time there were hazy now, foggy and distant as though viewed through thick, clouded glass. They didn’t matter, though. He didn’t need to remember the séance. He didn’t need to think about Beau’s anger-turned-pain, didn’t need to think about Jester’s concern that the séance had failed or about his own awe at seeing Mollymauk. He just had to look at Mollymauk now, and watch how the sun shot gold through the rich purple of his hair, and let his dream continue.

And then Molly rose from the chair, crossing the room to stand before Caleb, and Caleb saw the blood marring the soft lavender of his chest and remembered why the séance had happened all over again.

“Mollymauk,” he breathed softly, unable to tear his gaze away from the awful, jagged cut.

“ _Hello, darling_ ,” Molly replied, his smile softening slightly. He stepped closer, feet soundless on the soft, thick rug that lay above the floorboards of the room. Caleb had seen that rug in his waking world – the colours of it were faded by sun and dust, the fabric slightly worn and slightly shabby from years of use, but here it was bright and vibrant, almost as colourful as the hangings that adorned the walls or the ink that adorned Molly’s skin. Gods, but Mollymauk was so colourful. He was so bright, vivid and vibrant in a way that Caleb had never seen when awake, not even when he caught glimpses of him in mirrors. He always looked washed-out there, the lavender of his skin and the rich purple of his hair just a touch more faded, as though death had leeched the colour from his skin.

But not here. Here, Mollymauk was just as bright as he had been in life. Here, Mollymauk could do what he could never do in death.

“ _Caleb,”_ Mollymauk said again, and the sound of his voice made heat stir in Caleb’s bones. He smiled at Caleb, slow and soft and lazy and heart-breakingly familiar, and, just for a moment, Caleb thought he saw Mollymauk’s gaze dart down to rest on his lips. He couldn’t quite track Molly’s gaze, not with the flat, pupil-less red of his eyes, but it was a nice thought to have. It was a lovely thought to have. Here, in the dream, beyond the trappings of consciousness, it was the thought that Caleb most wanted to be true. He wanted Molly to look at his lips. He wanted Molly to look at all of him.

And it seemed that Molly wanted the same. A moment later his eyes shifted, his gaze sweeping up and down Caleb’s body and making Caleb shiver beneath his clothing in the most delightful way. There was a heat to that gaze, soft and banked but definitely there, as though waiting for the correct spark to bring it to life. Mollymauk stepped closer again. Caleb could see his hands moving, raising slightly as he reached out for him, crossing the short distance between them that still remained. It took no thought at all for Caleb to lift a foot and take a step of his own, bringing them face to face.

There was a short, barely noticeable pause, and then Mollymauk’s hands came to rest on his waist. Even with a layer of fabric in the way, Molly’s hands were as cold as a morgue.

“What are you doing?” Caleb asked quietly, but he made no move to stop Mollymauk. He didn’t _want_ to stop Mollymauk. Molly’s hands were gentle on his waist, familiar as though they’d done this a hundred times before for all that Caleb had dreamt of him on no more than a handful of occasions. He could feel the touch of Molly’s thumbs brushing against his skin, cool even through the layer of his shirt, but, much like in the previous dream, it didn’t discomfort him. He liked the feeling of Mollymauk’s touch. He could feel himself growing warm beneath his skin as his face started to flush red, his attention torn now between Mollymauk’s face and Mollymauk’s hands. He liked Mollymauk’s hands. He liked Mollymauk’s hands a lot.

He didn’t like when they paused in their movements, just as Mollymauk opened his mouth to reply to Caleb’s question.

“ _I like you, Caleb,”_ Molly said, smirking slightly. His tone was light, almost teasing, but there was weight to his words that marked them as entirely serious. “ _You’re a fascinating man, coming to my house and looking through all of Gustav’s things. You interest me_.”

“I- do I?”

“ _Of course you do. I think you’d interest anyone, love.”_ Molly raised a hand, tucking a strand of hair that Caleb hadn’t even noticed come loose from his ponytail back behind his ear, smiling the whole time. His knuckles grazed Caleb’s face, as cold as ice, and Caleb shivered for reasons that had nothing to do with the temperature of Mollymauk’s skin. He wanted that touch. He wanted Mollymauk to touch him like that again.

And, as though he could hear Caleb’s thought as clearly as his own voice, a moment later Molly shifted his hand to cup Caleb’s cheek. His palm very nearly stung with cold, as icy as the frost that was starting to paint the grass in the waking world, but Caleb felt himself tilting his head into it all the same. He wanted this, wanted this closeness and wanted this familiarity and he wanted to know _more_ , wanted to know who Mollymauk was and what he liked and what his hobbies were. He wanted to know what reports and paintings could not tell him. He wanted to get to know Mollymauk.

He wanted, he realised with the half-conscious mind of the sleeper, for Molly to touch him some more.

Caleb swallowed. He could taste iron on his tongue, old and heavy like blood left to congeal and clot, but it didn’t disgust him. Nothing here disgusted him. He could see the blood on Molly’s chest, shifting and oozing gently and shining ember-red in the dying sunlight, but no part of him recoiled at the sight of it. It wasn’t supposed to be there, he _knew_ that, but it was. It was here, and Molly was here, and in this strange, liminal space, where a summer sun shone through the window of a winter world, such strange things were not so much accepted as they were expected. They were not strange, here. Mollymauk was not strange.

“I-” Caleb said softly, and felt his words cut themselves short in his throat. Molly was still watching him, his gaze as soft and as cautious as the touch of his hands upon Caleb’s waist. “I- _ich_ …”

“ _Do you want me to stop?”_ Mollymauk asked quietly. “ _Not all the house things, I can’t exactly control them, but_ this? _Because I will, if you want me to. It’s one thing to startle you in an attempt to get you to leave, darling. This, I feel, is just a little bit different_.”

Caleb swallowed. He should want Mollymauk to stop, logically. Mollymauk was dead and gone, buried in a grave beneath brambles that clung close to the stone and ironwork of his cemetery. He was a ghost that shouldn’t exist, a spirit that had found space within the rational, reasonable world that Caleb had known for so long. He was _dead_. He wasn’t real, not in the way that Beauregard and Jester and Caduceus were real. This touch, this moment, this dream and this house and everything that had happened within it, every fleeting glimpse of purple and every whisper of the wind and every caress of the breeze against his skin – he should hate it. He should be terrified of it. He should be terrified of Mollymauk.

But he wasn’t. Not here.

Not here, with his inhibitions held at bay by the veil of slumber. Here, in the dream, he could acknowledge what he wanted. Here, he could look at Mollymauk, and look at the sunlight painting his skin in gold and gathering through his hair as though woven there, and could acknowledge to himself that he wanted him. Mollymauk was so, so beautiful. The sunlight was fading slowly, the gold edging towards amber and a soft, rich red, but for now Mollymauk was incandescent, his eyes almost glowing as he continued to watch Caleb.

“ _Caleb?”_ he asked quietly, the warmth of his voice so entirely, perfectly at odds with the coldness of his skin. “ _Would you like me to stop this?”_

_Yes_ , Caleb thought. _No. You shouldn’t be touching me, Mollymauk. You should not exist._ He glanced down. On the back of one of Mollymauk’s hands, the ink shining bright and bold in the sunlight, he could see a snake’s head overlaying a pattern of flowers. He could see the snake, and the soft lavender of Molly’s skin, and the rich purple of his nails and the way his hands so carefully, so gently, so patiently held onto his waist, waiting for further permission. He could see the potential beyond them. He could see what he wanted to happen, and what could never be.

Except that this was only a dream. It wasn’t real. This was some fantasy spun up by his mind in the aftermath of the séance, all the stress and confusion of the last few days making itself known in his unconscious hours. Some part of Caleb, more awake than the rest of him, was aware that he’d used that same excuse before and had known it to be false then, too, but the rest of him quieted that voice and pulled it back down into slumber. He could indulge, here. That was what dreams were for, surely? They were for indulgence, for fantasy, for what was longed to be real but never could be. They were for just such moments as this, standing in impossible sunlight and staring at an impossibly beautiful man and realising, from the warmth beneath his skin and the heat in his veins and the swift, certain beating of his heart, exactly what he wanted.

Mollymauk smiled at him again, and Caleb couldn’t help but trace the curves of his mouth with his gaze.

“ _Caleb_?” Molly repeated. “ _What would you like_?”

This time, there was no hesitation.

“More,” Caleb breathed. _This is only a dream_ , he told himself. _This is only a dream, and it does not matter_. “Touch me more.”

\---

The week continued, as did the dreams. Caleb was never entirely sure of what happened in them upon waking, unable to remember anything more than the sight of Mollymauk’s face and the cool touch of his skin, but more than once he woke to find himself in the same situation as he had been the first time, with his pyjama pants unpleasantly damp and sticky against his skin. He found, too, that the guilt that followed such instances, while diminished, did not vanish entirely. Even after four nights of seeing Mollymauk in his slumber, of feeling his touch and watching his lips and marvelling at the play of sunlight across his features, he still felt unsettled by what his mind dreamed up for him. Mollymauk wasn’t his. His memory was not Caleb’s to hold and abuse. He was a dead man, long gone and buried underground, and spirit or not, Caleb’s shouldn’t be dreaming of him the way that he was. His dreams shouldn’t be making heat gather between his legs, shouldn’t be making him feel hot beneath his skin as Mollymauk’s hands skimmed over his thighs, or across his chest, or tangled in his hair. There was never any detail in his memory upon waking, was never any certainty of what Caleb’s mind had presented him with, but he could assume. He could guess at what pictures his sleeping brain had painted to bring him release, and was torn between enjoying the dreams for what they were, and feeling drowned in the shame of reaching such release to the memory of a murdered tiefling.

But whatever his feelings were, he didn’t know how to stop it.

He was still mulling over them a few days later, when Caduceus arrived at the house for his regular gardening visit with a letter for him. Caleb hadn’t been expecting any mail, and for a moment he worried that, somehow, Bryce had realised that he had been distracted from Lord Gustav’s will and was slowing his work on it, but he only needed to see the front of the letter in Caduceus’ hand to know that that wasn’t the case. All of Bryce’s letters, Caleb knew, were sent in smooth, ivory-coloured envelopes, the address written across them in Bryce’s own flowing hand, and while the script on this envelope was definitely flowing, it was significantly more flamboyant and elaborate than Bryce’s had ever been.

“I’ve got a letter for you, Mr Caleb!” Caduceus announced as he dismounted the cart, holding the letter in question out for Caleb. “From Miss Jester. She asked me to take it up with me this morning.”

_Ah._ That explained the handwriting. Caleb took the letter from Caduceus with a frown, murmuring a quiet ‘ _danke_ ’ before stepping to one side, turning the envelope over and quickly opening it. He had a good idea of what the context of the letter should be based on their previous interaction, and he only had to read the first sentence of the letter’s contents for that suspicion to be confirmed.

_Hi Caleb!_

_Just letting you know that Beau spoke to Calianna and they spent AGES looking through old files at the morgue and they managed to find the coroner’s report for Molly! Apparently it had been SUPER mis-filed which is why they didn’t find it last time because they weren’t even looking in the right place, because it wasn’t where it was meant to be at all or something stupid like that! Anyway, they have it now, so if you want to come by my place I can give it to you and then we can open it together and we’ll know more about what happened to Molly and it’ll be great!_

_Yours,_

_Jester (hugs)_

“Caduceus? Can you take me down to Jester’s house now?” Caleb asked without looking up, folding the letter up and tucking it away in his jacket pocket. “And then take me back? I will pay you extra for the journey, I just- I need to get there as soon as possible. This is important.”

“I can do that,” Caduceus replied. “I’d only just started unloading my things – climb up and I’ll be with you in just a moment.”

Caleb nodded. “Thank you.” He climbed up into the cart as swiftly as he could, and a moment later Caduceus joined him, settling into the driver’s seat with a content sounding sigh. Caleb didn’t speak much on the journey to the village, his mind too fully occupied with thoughts of what the coroner’s report might reveal, and soon he was dismounting the cart just up the street from Jester’s house, walking towards the blue tiefling waiting in the doorway as briskly as he could without running.

“Jester,” Caleb said, slightly out of breath from how quickly he’d covered the distance to Jester’s door. “You said- sorry, I need to catch my breath - you said that you have the coroner’s report? The correct one?”

Jester nodded, stepping aside to let Caleb in. “Yeah!” she said, starting to lead him through the shop and up the stairs to her flat. “Beau dropped it off yesterday evening and said something about having to go check her own notes so she’s not going to be here, but she said that she’d already read it, and so I went over to Caduceus and asked him to pass along a message for you but I didn’t want to make him go all the way up the hill right then because that would be rude, you know?” Jester only paused for breath as they reached the top of the stairs, quickly inhaling as she pushed open the door into her little flat. “ _And_ ,” she continued, crossing to the table, “it’s, like, really dark and spooky at night! And you were probably asleep or something and I didn’t want to disturb Molly and he’s already _dead_ anyway so I thought it wouldn’t hurt if we could wait an extra day to open it.”

“I suppose you have a point,” Caleb replied, hoping that his burning impatience to see the document didn’t come across in his voice. He could see it lying on the table before Jester, the card folder the same shape and colour and make as the ones in his briefcase, and he forced himself to slow his steps as he followed after Jester to sit beside her, the folder on the table before him. “Is this it?”

Jester nodded, her blue hair bouncing around her face. “Yeah, this is it! Beau dropped it off earlier.” She looked up at him, her face settling into a slightly more serious expression. “Do you want to open it now?”

“…Do you want me to?”

“Well _duh!”_ Jester replied immediately, rolling her eyes. “Of _course_ I want you to open it now! I want to know what it says! This could be super cool!”

“This is a coroner’s report.”

“A coroner’s report could still be cool,” Jester muttered. “Or it could be, like, super interesting, and tell us that Molly was _poisoned,_ or that he was killed by _wolves_ , or anything like that.”

For a moment, all Caleb could do was stare, finding his voice again after a few silent, baffled seconds. “…Jester, if you were so interested couldn’t you have read this yourself?” he asked, and Jester immediately frowned at him.

“ _No_ ,” she replied. “I’m not going to read someone else’s mail, that’s really rude. Beau said it was for you, so I’m going to wait for you to read it!” She paused, and then added, “And _then_ I’ll ask you what it says!”

“You are a strange individual,” Caleb muttered, and stopped himself from saying much more by turning his attention to the real reason why he was here at all. The card of the folder was covered in a myriad of creases, as though at some point it had been crumpled up and left in the bottom of a drawer, out of sight and out of mind. Caleb reached for it, feeling the mountain-peak ridges of the creases pressing against his fingertips, and then gently, carefully, he drew it towards himself and opened it.

Inside, there was a single sheet of paper. Like the card of the folder it, too, was crumpled and worn, stained and muddied in places by careless hands and poor keeping, but the text on it was still clear and legible. Caleb skimmed the first few lines of it, not expecting to glean any new information from Mollymauk’s name or physical description, but he slowed his reading when he came across the description of the injuries found on Molly’s body.

_Large stab wound to the chest_ , the description began and behind Caleb’s eyes, all he could see was a peacock-embroidered waistcoat turned red with blood. He shook his head slightly, forcing himself to keep reading, and then his gaze came to settle on the concluding line of the document, and he felt his blood freeze in his veins.

_Cause of death: Stab wound to the chest severing aorta causing catastrophic fatal haemorrhage._

“I knew it,” Caleb murmured softly. In his mind’s eye he could still see Mollymauk, smiling and beautiful even as blood stained his skin scarlet. “I _knew_ it.”

“Knew what?” Jester asked, leaning in closer towards him. Caleb leaned back a little automatically but kept the report between them, lifting a finger and pointing to what he’d just read.

“This,” he replied. “Look. It’s like Beauregard said – Mollymauk wasn’t beaten.”

“Then what happened to him?”

Caleb swallowed. The words before him were black on white, as bland and devoid of emotion as all medical and legal documents, but all Caleb could see was the rich, vibrant red of the blood on Mollymauk’s chest. He could see it oozing from the cut, staining skin and clothing alike. He could smell it, could taste the iron-copper scent of it on the back of his throat.

He could remember the warm tackiness against his fingers, and how it had clung to his skin when he’d reached out to touch Molly’s chest in his dream the previous night. Beneath the blood, the cut had been jagged as though someone had tried to tear through Mollymauk’s chest.

Caleb cleared his throat, shaking his head slightly to dismiss the image from his mind. “Look, just here,” he said, tapping the line again. “Mollymau- Molly wasn’t beaten. It wasn’t a brawl. He was stabbed. Whoever killed him, it was intentional.” Caleb dropped his hand from the page, letting it curl atop his thigh. The letters stared out at him from the report, not judging or blaming but merely stating the absolute, undeniable truth of the matter. “The blade pierced his heart. He bled out into his own body.”

Jester shivered. “Ew,” she muttered. “That’s really nasty.”

“I can’t imagine that it would have been pleasant.”

“At least he would have died quickly, though, right?”

Caleb nodded slowly. He hadn’t seen too many coroner’s reports in his time, seeing how the majority of his clients had died from age-related illness, but he’d seen enough. He’d heard stories from his colleagues. He knew. “Yes,” he said quietly. “It is- an injury like this, he would have died in minutes, if not seconds.” Drowning in his own blood, possibly, depending on exactly how the blade had cut him. “He would- _ja_ , it would have been fast. He would not have suffered for long.”

“That’s good,” Jester said, her voice almost surprisingly serious. “Molly sounds like he was really nice when he was alive. I wouldn’t have wanted him to suffer when it wasn’t even his fault that he was dead.”

“No one should suffer when they die,” Caleb said quietly. He ran his fingers over the paper of the coroner’s report again, tracing the lines and loops of the scrawled handwriting. “No matter what. No one should suffer when they die. Not then.” Quietly, without looking up, he shut the cover of the folder, hiding the truth of Molly’s death from the world once again. “…Jester?”

“Yeah?”

“Would it be alright if I took this back to the house with me? There may be more information that I will be able to-”

“Yeah, yeah, of course!” Jester interrupted, flapping a hand at him. “Beau left it for you, after all, and she said that she’d already read it so I don’t see why not. You just have to promise me _one_ thing, though.”

“…What?” Caleb asked, feeling more than a little suspicious.

Jester looked at him, her blue eyes serious. “Let me know if you find out what happened to Molly,” she said quietly. “Like, if you find out why it happened. Anything like that. Okay?”

Caleb blinked. “Oh,” he heard himself say. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but he hadn’t been expecting that. “ _Ich_ \- _ja_ , yes, of course. I will- I was going to do that anyway. I was going to tell you and Miss Beauregard anything that I found.” He looked back down at the folder, watching as the pale winter sunlight caught on the creases and cast ink-dark shadows across the card. “You have both been very important in this process. You both deserve to know anything that I discover. Beauregard especially.” Beauregard most of all. Neither Caleb nor Jester had lost anyone, not here. They hadn’t lost a friend, a soulmate, a companion so close he was practically family. They hadn’t had to see a friend they had last seen committed to the ground appearing as little more than a spirit, speaking with a familiar voice and teasing them with familiar jibes.

If anyone deserved to know what had happened to Molly, it was Beau.

“I’m going to go back to the house,” Caleb muttered, pushing his chair back from the table and standing. “I need to- I need to compare this to some documents there. Thank you for contacting me, Jester.”

“Of course!” Jester replied, a grin crossing her face. “Do you want me to see you out?”

“ _Nein, danke_.”

“…What does that mean?”

Caleb cleared his throat. “It means ‘no thank you’. It is Zemnian.”

“Oh! Oh, okay! Well, get home safe, alright?”

Caleb smiled, thin and wry. “I will certainly try,” he replied, and then, holding the folder close to his chest, he bid Jester his final goodbyes, and left her house. Caduceus, he was happy to see, was still waiting outside, his cart stopped just a short distance from Jester’s from door. Caleb approached it quickly, not wanting to risk dropping the folder that detailed the death of Mollymauk Tealeaf into the chilly puddles that lined the damp road.

“Did you get what you needed?” Caduceus asked as Caleb approached the cart. “From Miss Jester?”

Caleb nodded. “I did,” he said quietly, his mind still full of thoughts of Mollymauk, and of how the blood must have stained his clothing the same scarlet of his eyes. He reached out for the cart with absent hands, climbing up to sit down next to Caduceus, and the moment he was settled Caduceus clicked his tongue and urged the horse on, starting the journey back to the house. “It was, um… it was informative.”

“Oh? What was it?”

“It was a coroner’s report.”

“About Master Mollymauk?”

“Mm.”

“I thought you already had that.”

Caleb shook his head. “Not this one,” he muttered. “Not the correct one.”

From the corner of his eye, Caleb saw Caduceus’ ears twitch. “…Huh,” he said eventually. “So the other one, the one you brought with you, that one is…”

“…fake,” Caleb said quietly. He wasn’t sure if he should be telling Caduceus that, wasn’t sure if the information should be spread at all, but he couldn’t have stopped himself from saying it. It was the truth, and the truth deserved to breathe. “Mollymauk’s death… it wasn’t an accident.”

“Oh. Oh, that’s not very nice at all.”

Caleb gave a short snort of humourless laughter. “ _Ja_ ,” he muttered. “I suppose that is one way to put it.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“No.” Not yet. Caleb had the evidence in hand now, the suspicions that he had been accumulating while staying at the house now confirmed by the single sheet of paper held by the slim card folder. He was going to find out what had happened to Molly. He was going to find out who had killed him, and why.

He had to.

“Oh,” Caduceus replied, his ears flicking. “Oh, that’s a shame.”

_It is,_ Caleb thought, and said nothing. _It was_.

He stayed silent as they slowly left the village, absently running his fingers back and forth over the folder as his mind continued to be filled with thoughts and images of Mollymauk. So much of what he had seen, so much of what had confused him and left him feeling adrift and uncertain made sense now. He remembered his second night at the house, remembered descending the stairs and seeing the stain marring the chest of every painting of Mollymauk that he came across. He remembered the blood on his fingers, and the blood that had been left on his cheek the first night there, and he remembered every single time he had seen Molly since, in dreams or in mirrors or in the strange, uncertain places that he could not be sure about. He had seen the cut in Molly’s chest from the very beginning. He had seen the evidence ever since he had first arrived.

From the very start, he had known what had cut the thread of Mollymauk’s life.

He just didn’t know the hand that wielded it.

“Caduceus?” Caleb asked quietly as the cart approached the base of the hill, starting its ascent up the mist-hung lane. “You know a lot about ghosts and spirits, don’t you?”

Caduceus shrugged, swaying from side to side as the cart clattered over the cobblestones. “I’m not sure I’d say that. I mean, sure, I know some things, but so does everyone else.”

“But you know more than me.”

“Well, sure, I suppose I do.”

Caleb nodded to himself. He lifted one hand, worrying at the cuff of his shirt, running his fingers back and forth over the smooth metal of his cufflink. “Do you- why is it that I cannot always see Mollymauk?” he asked, his words quiet and uncertain. “In- around the house? Sometimes I can feel him but I cannot see him...”

There was a short pause.

“Well,” Caduceus said eventually, ducking his head as the cart rumbled beneath a low-hanging tree branch, “do you remember what I told you a few days ago? About between-places.”

Caleb nodded. “Mm, _ja_.”

“That’s pretty much most of it, honestly. It can take effort for ghosts to make their way from the between-place to here, or to, ah, manifest into something that we would inherently recognise as being a person, and sometimes the between-place can warp our perception of them. They don’t quite belong to our world or the other world, and they don’t quite exist in either world, and that’s why it can be difficult for them to, ah, make themselves known to us. It’s why it can be hard for them to know what they’re seeing, too.”

Caleb frowned. “What do you mean by that?” he asked curiously, looking up and over at Caduceus as the cart rocked and swayed. “About ghosts and spirits not knowing what they are seeing?” From all his interactions with Mollymauk, it seemed that Mollymauk was entirely aware of what he was seeing. He watched Caleb from mirrors, his flat red gaze tracking him as he moved around the rooms of the house. He spoke to Caleb, calling him by name in the safety and solitude of his dreams. He touched his skin through the breeze, and petted his cat however he could, and he was aware enough to send relevant documents in Caleb’s direction, should Caleb need them. He was conscious. He was present.

He was _listening_.

Caduceus shrugged. “It’s- well, I can’t actually speak for ghosts themselves, of course, seeing how I’m fairly sure I’m alive, but I’ve experienced them enough times. I’ve encountered a couple of them, heard tales from my family and all that, so I feel I have a good understanding of them. Best I can tell,” Caduceus continued, “ghosts and spirits and the like… existing between worlds, it can be tricky for them to work out what they’re seeing, sometimes.”

“How so?”

“Well, the same way it can be tricky for us to see them. They don’t entirely belong here. Once again, I can’t speak from personal experience, but I can imagine that it would take some degree of effort to interact with something on a different plane of existence. Maybe seeing things doesn’t take as much effort, but it can still be tricky. The world the spirits are meant to be in was never meant to interact with ours, so there can be some… distortion.”

“Distortion?” Caleb echoed, thinking back to Mollymauk’s appearance at the séance. “You mean… ghosts appearing without any colour? Things like that?”

“Yeah, I suppose. That’s how we see them, at least. For them, maybe they see the world that way, all washed out and pale, which can’t be very pleasant, but maybe it’s more like a fog,” Caduceus said, his voice perfectly level and calm as he continued to drive the cart up the hill, and Caleb shivered. He wasn’t blinded by the mist the way he had been the time he’d foolishly tried to make his way down the hill on his own, but he still couldn’t see further than a few yards beyond the horse’s ears, and he could still feel the mist sighing against the back of his neck as though waiting for him to step back into it. “It’s like fog, in that you can only recognise people when they’re up close to you. Sometimes the fog is clear or barely there, and you can see things as they are, or sometimes it’s a light mist, or sometimes you can hear things well enough to know what’s really there, but that might not always be the case. And you can look through the fog and see into that other world for a while, and maybe, over time, you can come to recognise certain forms, or you find one patch where you can see things a bit easier, but you can’t control the fog, and if you’re particularly stressed or worried then it’s possible for the shapes in the fog to look a little concerning to you. Sure, you may know the face of your best friend when you see them in the daylight, but when they’re just a figure in the fog, and you’re worrying about monsters that may live in the shadows, then… well, maybe then you can’t tell if the figure is your friend or a monster, and so you err on the side of caution. It’s alright to be wrong when a shape is really your friend. That’s alright. If they’re a good friend, they’ll understand, and maybe you can figure out some sort of system to establish each other as friends when you can’t quite see them or hear them. Mistaking a friend for an enemy is an alright mistake to make. It’s not terrible. But you can only mistake a foe for a friend once.”

“Why only once?” Caleb heard himself say, as though he didn’t already know the answer.

Caduceus twitched the reins. “Because,” he said calmly, “you won’t be alive enough to mistake them a second time.”

In the silence of the mist, Caleb shivered.

“The same applies for you too, Mr Caleb,” Caduceus continued calmly. “It’s important to know exactly who you’re speaking to. Dreams are the most dangerous places to meet them, you know.”

Even if he had wanted to, Caleb couldn’t have stopped his immediate question. “Why?”

“Because they have a bit more freedom there – after all, you’re already meeting them halfway. Now, that can be a good thing if you want to communicate with them, but it can also be a bad thing. They don’t have to follow the laws of the natural world the way we do, because they’re no longer part of it. If they want to do something unpleasant, or something more strange and unnatural, they can do that more easily when you give them the space inside your head to do so. You’re like a- an anchor, I suppose. A lighthouse. You’re giving them a between-space that you yourself can access.”

“Is there any way to avoid doing that?” Caleb asked, and Caduceus shrugged again.

“Probably,” he replied, “but I don’t know any way. Besides, you may find that you don’t want to.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to?”

Caduceus glanced over at him. He didn’t raise an eyebrow, not how Caleb suspected Jester would if she knew more about his interactions with the deceased son of Lord Gustav, but all the same, Caleb got the impression from Caduceus that he was seeing past all of Caleb’s words, pinning down his true thoughts like butterflies. There was an unsettling level of awareness to Caduceus’ gaze that made Caleb want to squirm.

And then Caduceus looked back at the road, and the moment passed, and Caleb suddenly felt like he could breathe again.

“Well,” Caduceus said calmly, “some people enjoy interacting with spirits, you know. They have a lot of information that we don’t. And if that spirit is that of a friend, or a family member, or a lover… there’s a lot that can happen in a shared between-space. There’s a lot you can say. There’s a lot you can do.”

“Are you speaking from experience, Mr Clay?” Caleb heard himself ask, and Caduceus shrugged.

“Perhaps,” he said vaguely. “Perhaps not. What separates our dreams from the dreams of others? How do we know that we are sharing a between-space, and not simply conjuring what we want to dream? The mind is a strange thing, Mr Caleb. Grief is a strange thing, and so is superstition, and so are spirits. There’s a lot of crossover there. There’s a lot of unknowns.”

Quietly, Caleb lifted a hand and pressed it to his waist where Molly’s hand had once rested. Even through the layers of his jacket and shirt he thought he could feel the warmth of his own skin, so different to the cool chill that Molllymauk gave off. He didn’t want to lose that touch. He knew that, felt like he had always known it, but he knew it with certainty, now. He didn’t want to lose that one space where Molly could reach for him with more than just a breeze, where Molly could touch him with his own hands and not have to use the wind as his substitute. He didn’t want to lose the space where he could reach for Molly, and Molly could reach back, and they could both hold each other close, and Caleb could once again hear his name on Molly’s tongue.

He didn’t want to lose the space that belonged to himself and Mollymauk alone, and absolutely no-one else.

“I see,” Caleb said, and dropped his hand back down to his thigh. For the briefest moment after he lifted his hand the cool winter air swarmed to fill the space it had once possessed, touching cold to his skin through his shirt, but it wasn’t the same. Somehow, despite it being the exact same type of temperature change that marked Mollymauk’s interactions, it was entirely distinct and difference. There was no thought to it, no direction. It was simply the winter air, acting how physics instructed it to. It wasn’t Mollymauk. It wasn’t the touch that Caleb wanted. “…Caduceus?”

“Mm?”

“Are there… are there any ways to, ah… entice ghosts? To make them show themselves or give some indication of their presence?”

For a long few moments, there was no sound but that of the wheels rattling over the cobbles. Caleb felt himself holding his breath as the silence stretched on, waiting for Caduceus to speak up. He hadn’t entirely meant to ask what he had, but the question has escaped him before he’d had the chance to think it through more fully. He wondered how Caduceus was interpreting the question. He wondered if Caduceus knew why he had asked it.

And then, after what felt like minutes, Caduceus replied.

“Well,” he said slowly, “yeah, sure. There’s a few ways to entice ghosts, get them all excited. You could move things out of position, that can do that trick. Or if they think you’re someone else, say if you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be, then that might get them agitated. I don’t think ghosts like it much when you get somewhere that only a few other people should be able to access. There’s a reason you get a lot of ghost stories about locked rooms, you know.”

“I- I hadn’t noticed that, actually.”

“No? Oh, well, it’s pretty interesting once you start to think about it. Ghosts like things to be how they used to be when they were alive, and they also struggle sometimes with figuring out who someone is. If they can’t tell who someone is, and they see them in a room that only a certain person had the key for, well… they might get ideas. Anyway,” Caduceus continued, as the cart lurched to an unexpected stop. “We’re here. Don’t worry about paying me any extra for the trip, Mr Caleb.”

Caleb looked up, startled to discover that they were already at the gates of the house. “Oh,” he said faintly. How had he not noticed how close they had gotten to the crest of the hill? How had he not noticed the thinning of the mist? “I- oh. Okay.”

“I’m going to get to work with the gardening, but you can ask me any more questions that you think of. I’m happy to help, especially where Master Mollymauk is concerned. It’s a real shame that he’s gone.”

“It is,” Caleb mumbled, rising from the cart and starting to dismount it. It _was_ a shame that Mollymauk was gone, in more ways than Caleb had originally thought. It was a shame that his life, once so vibrant, had been cut so short. It was a shame that Beauregard had lost her best friend, and Yasha too.

It was a shame that Caleb had never had the chance to meet him in the flesh, and never would.

“Mr Caleb?” Caduceus asked, and Caleb paused, one hand still on the cart.

“… _Ja_?”

“I’ve got a question for you, if you don’t mind answering it.”

Caleb shrugged. Up in the cart Caduceus leaned forwards, twisting slightly until he was very nearly looming over Caleb.

“I was just wondering,” he said, his voice never once leaving the calm tone it had had all journey, “if you’ve been to _every_ room in the house?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those of you who are reading my Clayleb fic, The Mycelium Effect, may be aware that I put it on pause for a week so that I could take a break, as I'm currently away from home for a month on work training. I am _still_ away from home, and have been struggling to get my 2000 words a day written. As a result, The House on Tealeaf Hill will be going on break for a week.
> 
> The next chapter will be posted on **October 21st**.


	11. Chapter 11

_Had_ he been to every room in the house?

The immediate answer that arose in Caleb’s mind, as he left the cart behind him and walked back to the house, was _yes_. Yes, of course he had. He’d been staying in the house on Tealeaf Hill for a while now, and he’d spent some amount of time doing his job before being distracted by… well, by everything else. He’d walked it’s dust-hung halls and corridors, had inspected rooms and gathered paperwork and collected documents and had brought them all through to the dining room where Mollymauk had, somehow, organised them for him. He’d tried every door that he could find, checking them to make sure that they wouldn’t swing shut on their own and trap Frumpkin behind them, and he’d been provided with a large ring of keys upon arrival. He should have seen every room in the house.

He should have, but he hadn’t, and it only took until the front door swung shut behind Caleb for him to realise that. He hadn’t seen every room in the house. Not yet. He’d been meaning to, had been planning on working his way from one end of the house to the other, trying every key and noting down where doors may need a locksmith to open them to make a start on making the house suitable for resale, but he’d been waylaid by shadows and spirits and lonely, watchful ghosts. He’d become distracted. He’d let Mollymauk into his mind, into the strange between-world of his dreams, and, at some point, he’d become distracted from his original job here. There were still locked doors in this house that Caleb hadn’t opened. There were still secrets that he hadn’t found.

And now, with the weight of Mollymauk’s murder hanging heavy above his head, he knew with a certainty akin to gravity that he could not let those secrets go unfound.

Caleb took Caduceus’ words to heart. The groundskeeper, for all his oddness and vague, unsettling strangeness, still seemed surprisingly sensible and perceptive to him, and so, after arriving back at the house, he proceeded to spend an afternoon wandering from room to room, methodically trying every single door that he came across. The house, while large, was not quite as vast or expansive as a few that he had seen before, but it was big enough that he was grateful for his infallibly accurate memory. The corridors sprawled out in all manner of directions, at times seemingly uncaring for the laws of physics and geometry that bound all physical space, but his time at the house had familiarised him to them somewhat. He knew, now, how to make his way to the dining room through the small sitting room. He knew which steps creaked on the grand, elegant staircase. He knew which rooms had sunlight in the morning, and which had sunlight in the evening, and he knew which rooms he tended to prefer. He knew which rooms were familiar to him.

The majority of the doors opened easily to him, just as they had during his first few days at the house. The doors to his bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom he had been using, and the dining room that he had turned into a workspace of sorts were of no surprise to him, seeing how he opened them multiple times a day, and similarly, the majority of doors in the downstairs of the house were, while rusty, unlocked, and would at worst open beneath a few sturdy shoves of his shoulder. The parlours and sitting rooms opened easily, the marks of Caleb’s footsteps through the dust still clearly apparent in the majority of them; the servant’s quarters were in slightly worse condition, with several of the doors’ hinges having accumulated just enough rust that they opened with low, ominous creaks, but they opened all the same beneath the ring of keys that Caleb held and that was what mattered.

At the end of his exploration, he had only encountered two doors that refused to yield to the keys that he held, one at the end of a corridor on the ground floor and another further along the same corridor that his bedroom was on. He had his suspicions of what the room beside his bedroom was, but without Beauregard’s confirmation he couldn’t be certain, and so he resolved to send a message asking for her with Caduceus the next day. As much as it irked him, as much as it frustrated him that there were, even now, places in the house that he could not go, he knew that there was nothing that he could do. All he could do was wait, and be patient, and think back over everything that he had learned.

Like a siren’s call, Caleb felt Mollymauk’s coroner’s report drawing him back to the dining room table. He was already in the room, having naturally circled back around to it after inspecting the house, and the card folder now lay in the table, sitting in its own little cleared space beside Caleb’s notebook. Everything else, all letters and documents, had been pushed to the side, the structure of the spread-out paperwork already starting to rebalance itself around this new pivotal point.

Caleb sat and reached out to flip open the little card folder, smoothing it until it lay flat atop the table. He leaned forwards, running his fingers over the paper once again. He hadn’t expected anything to change on the page since he had last read it onlya few short hours ago, but after the strangeness of the house and the falseness of the last coroner’s report, some part of him wanted to be certain that every part of it was exactly how it had been.

Some part of him wished that this, too, was wrong.

But nothing had changed. The paper was, of course, exactly how it always had been. Caleb’s gaze dropped, coming to rest once again on the cause of death. He shivered. He didn’t know why, but something about this particular method of death made him feel unsettled all the way down to his bones. It was so cold, so _impersonal_. Caleb knew that he didn’t have the most experience when it came to deaths such as these – thank the gods – but all the same, he knew that emotion-based murders tended to be… messier. He’d picked that up from other people at the company, from talking to the guard and from his habit of devouring practically any book, and though he had no first-hand experience to confirm it, he didn’t doubt or disbelieve it. Emotional murders, those born of spite or lust or revenge, were rarely neat and clean the way this one way. This murder, _Molly’s_ murder… it felt cold. Distant. Whoever killed him had little to no stake in the matter. Whoever had killed him didn’t know him. Whoever had killed him had seen him, and identified him, and then they had killed him in an alley, and killed his best friend too, simply for being there. And then, they had left.

It was cold and impersonal, and it made Caleb’s heart ache.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, not looking up from the paper. He felt the breeze breathing against his neck, felt it resting atop his arm, and he sighed, soft and quiet in the absolute silence of the house. “I am- I am sorry, Mollymauk. That you had to end like this.”

The curtains rustled softly, the flames of the candles briefly swaying in towards him. _Like what_?

Caleb nodded down at the paper. “Like _this_. It is- it was a cold death, Mollymauk, and I know that I could not have done anything about it, but I am sorry that you ended in that way all the same. It sounds lonely. I know that your friend was there, but it was not- it could not have been pleasant. I know that no death is, of course, but this… it was _cold_ , Mollymauk. It was- it was senseless. It shouldn’t have happened.”

The flames flickered, dancing on their wicks like the burning wings of pinned butterflies. _I know_.

Beneath Caleb’s fingers, the paper rustled soft and quiet above the whisperings of the breeze. Caleb blinked, not looking up from the report as, at the corners of his eyes, he felt tears gathering. _Mollymauk Tealeaf, lying in an alley, staring up at the stars above as his life seeped out onto the cobblestones._ “I am sorry,” Caleb whispered again. He could feel his hand twisting, could feel himself tugging on the paper, and was powerless to stop it. “I am sorry. I will- I will find out why this happened. I promise you.”

Against his arm, Caleb felt the breeze starting to drift down. He turned his hand palm-up, letting the breeze slip between his fingers, and a moment later he felt it increase in pressure, as though it were trying to gently squeeze his hand. It wasn’t an interaction that he’d had before with the breeze, wasn’t one that he had mentally assigned a verbal translation to, but he felt that, for this, he didn’t need to.

For this, he felt that he already knew what Mollymauk was trying to say.

_Thank you_.

\---

Beauregard arrived the following day, kindly dropped off at the top of the hill by Caduceus after he had delivered Caleb’s letter. She wasted no time loitering outside, stepping inside the house and out of the chilly winter air the moment that Caleb opened the door to her.

“You said in your note that you needed to know what some rooms were,” she said with little preamble, walking past Caleb and into the grand, open entrance hall of the house. “Show me which ones. How many are there?”

“Just two,” Caleb said, feeling a little taken aback by Beauregard’s brusqueness. He shut the door and crossed the hall, gesturing for her over her shoulder. “One downstairs, and one upstairs. I found this one yesterday,” Caleb remarked, leading the way along a corridor as Beau trailed behind him. She kept pace with his swift, certain steps, but from the corner of his eye he could see her glancing around uncertainty, her hands tucked beneath her crossed arms as though attempting to make herself look bigger. For all that the house had, once upon a time, been her own, Caleb couldn’t help but notice how on-edge she seemed – her gaze kept settling on the paintings that lined the hallway, her entire body twitching and shifting at every gust of wind and rattle of the windows that Caleb had now become so accustomed to.

“Uh-huh,” she muttered, still not looking at him. “It’s- where is it?”

“Just along here.”

“You mean the office?”

“…Is it an office?”

Beau shrugged, following after him. “If it’s that one door at the end of the corridor with, like, a candle sconce that can hold two candles and is also slightly bent next to it, then yeah. My dad used it as an office, and Gustav did too.”

“Why is the candle sconce dented?”

“I headbutted it by accident one time and Gustav never got round to repairing it.” Beau paused, still not looking at Caleb, and then added, in a slightly cooler tone, “You may want to fix it up, though, if you’re going to be selling the house on. I can give you the address of a good metalworker.”

“…Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. You gonna show me this room so I can check or…?”

Caleb nodded, quickly increasing his pace. “Oh, _ja_ , yes, it is- here we are.”

Beau slowed to a stop beside him, her gaze darting across the door. Just for a moment, Caleb though he saw her eyes settle on the slightly dented candle sconce that clung to the wall beside it. “Yeah, just as I thought,” she said. “This is Gustav’s office. I’m not surprised you couldn’t open it, you know. He always had it locked. And not with the house keys either, you know. He had, like, his own fancy key or something.”

“…Why? Was he worried about-”

“Dunno,” Beauregard interrupted, shrugging. “He just did. Just means that I’m not blaming you for not getting it open. You could’ve tried the window, though.”

Caleb blinked. “I hadn’t even considered that.”

“Nah, of course you hadn’t. Anyway, where’s this other room? You said there were two, right?”

“Oh, _ja_ , I did!”

“Great. Lead the way.”

Caleb did. He turned, heading back down the corridor and into the main hall, and then took the stairs up, hearing Beau following after him until, as they approached the top of the stairs, her footsteps suddenly slowed. Caleb turned around as he reached the landing, hearing her footsteps coming slower and slower, and saw her looking right past him, her gaze focused on the doors that lined the opposite wall of the corridor.

No, not the doors. There was only one that she was looking at.

Mollymauk’s door.

“Beauregard?” Caleb asked softly and Beau jumped, her gaze snapping back to him.

“Hm?” she hummed, quickly taking the remaining stairs and joining him on the landing. “What’s up?”

“Are you alright?”

“What? Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I’m great. This is- I’m cool. Don’t worry about me.”

Caleb narrowed his eyes. She still wasn’t looking at him, her gaze drifting back to Mollymauk’s door, but there wasn’t much he could do about that, and, really, he didn’t blame her. It wasn’t so long ago that she had lived in the house, not just as a Lionett, but as an adoptive Tealeaf-Fletching. This had been her home. The door she was looking at had once belonged to her best friend. It would have been more unsettling, Caleb thought, if she had acted as if everything was perfectly fine.

“Alright,” he said quietly, and then he turned, walking along the corridor towards the grandfather clock that stood at one end of it. There was no point in drawing attention to her distraction. “It is just here, the door that I cannot open. It is the one next to- next to- it is this door, here.”

For a moment, he heard nothing behind him. And then the moment passed, and Caleb once again heard the floorboards creak as Beau trailed after him, until she came to a stop at his side with a nod.

“This one is Lucien’s room,” Beau said immediately. She reached out one leg, gently kicking the door with a dull _thud_. “Fucker was always keeping it locked. I dunno what kind of shit he was keeping in there, seeing how there’s nothing all that weird or rare or whatever in Alfield, but I guess he might have had paperwork that he didn’t want Molly to find. That, or he got really tired of us putting centipedes in his bed in summer.”

“I can’t believe that a locked door would have stopped you for very long.”

“It didn’t,” Beau admitted, a sly smile crossing her face and chasing away the glumness that had been slowly accumulating the longer she spent in the house. “Yasha gave me a boost up and I climbed in through the window one time. He was _so_ pissed off at that. I genuinely thought that Gustav was going to kick me out into the street after that. I think Molly talked him down, though. He probably took all the blame for it, or something dumb like that.” Her smile faded, her expression becoming more sombre. “He was always doing that sort of shit. Taking the fall for me and all that, I mean.”

“He sounds like a good friend,” Caleb said softly.

“He was,” Beau agreed, her voice quieter than it had been before. “He was- yeah, he was a good friend. He was a really good friend.”

“…Beauregard?”

“Mm?”

“Will you- do you know how to get these doors open?”

Beau breathed out a sigh. “Give me a few days,” she said. “I’ve got a- I’ve got a friend who can help out with this. She’s pretty handy with all of- well, all of this sort of stuff.”

“Do you think she will be willing to come up here? Caduceus said-”

“Cad said that no one wants to come up here, right?”

Caleb nodded.

“Well, that’s true. But Nott is… she’s good. She’ll help us if I- if we need her to. Trust me on that.”

Caleb shrugged. There was nothing else that he could really do, and he wasn’t going to argue if someone else in the village was brave enough to face down the haunted bones of Tealeaf Hill. “Alright,” he said. “When do you think you’ll be able to bring her here?”

\---

As it turned out, Caleb only had to wait another day for Beau to arrive again, this time with a small, plump halfling woman in tow, a necklace of bright buttons shining around her neck in the feeble sunlight.

“This is Nott,” Beau said, nodding down to the halfling woman as she wandered into the house. “I mentioned her a few days ago. At the seanc- at Jester’s house. When we were talking about all of this, and locked doors, and Molly’s cards- stuff like that. She can help us.”

“Ah, yes,” Caleb said slowly. “You did mention her.” He turned his attention towards Nott, reaching out a hand to her. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss…?”

“Mrs Veth Brenatto,” the halfling replied, taking Caleb’s hand in a far firmer grasp than he had expected. She grinned up at him, shaking his hand before letting go of it. “But call me Nott. Everyone does.”

“I- alright. Nott. I’m Caleb Widogast. I am the, ah… I am the executor of Lord Gustav’s will.” It felt unexpectedly odd to say those words out loud, even though Caleb knew them to be true. He was, undeniably, the executor assigned to his house. To carry out Lord Gustav’s will was quite literally his job, but right now it didn’t feel like it. That was a secondary matter. It was unimportant.

It was unimportant compared to Mollymauk.

Caleb gave his head a slight shake, dismissing that thought from his mind, and stepped aside slightly to let Nott into the house. “Thank you for coming,” he said, shutting the door behind Nott and Beau and starting to lead them through the house towards the room that Beau had identified as Gustav’s study. “Beauregard has told you why you are here, _ja_?”

“Yeah,” Nott replied. “You need me to pick some locks!”

Caleb found himself smiling at how bluntly Nott put it. “I do,” he agreed, stopping before the office door. “This is the first one. If you would…?”

“Yeah, yeah, stand aside.” Nott stepped forwards, one hand reaching up and towards the collar of her grey dress. Caleb stepped back, looking over at Beau with a raised eyebrow, but Beau merely shrugged.

“She keeps her picks in her bra,” she said casually. “Says it’s a good place to keep them.”

“It’s the _best_ place to keep them,” Nott corrected, already at work on the door. “They can’t stab you in the leg there.”

“Yeah, that’s fair, but they can still stab you in the tit.”

“Not if you lie them flat! And no one ever tries to look for lockpicks in a bra. It’s _impolite_.”

There was a soft _click_.

“Anyway, that’s that done,” Nott announced, stepping back from the door with a shiver as it slowly creaked open a few inches. “Ugh. Where’s the next one? I don’t want to be in this creepy place any longer than I have to be. No offence, Caleb. Or you, Beau.”

“None taken,” Caleb muttered, hearing Beau echo the same thought. He stepped to one side slightly, peering in through the half-ajar door as, behind him, he heard Beau start speaking.

“Come on,” she was saying. “The other room is just upstairs; I’ll lead you to it.” She cleared her throat, raising her voice slightly. “Caleb! You coming with us? Or do you have to go pokin’ around Gustav’s study now?”

Caleb shook his head. He couldn’t see much through the crack in the door beyond the dancing motes of disturbed dust shining silver-gold in the cold sunlight, but he wanted to see more. He wanted to know where Gustav had once worked, wanted to discover the space he had once inhabited. He wanted to check his desk, and search through the drawers, and see if he might find something that would help him with his job.

Or, if he were to be entirely honest with himself, he wanted to see if he might find something that would tell him more about Mollymauk.

“You go without me,” he murmured. “I will- I will make a start looking at this room. Thank you for your work, Nott.”

“Sure,” he heard Nott say, followed by the quiet sounds of footsteps swallowed in carpet as she and Nott started back along the corridor. Caleb stepped closer to the door, reaching out with one hand to push it open further. The hinges creaked as it swung open, giving a low, deep groan like the branches of a centuries-old oak, but it opened easily all the same, revealing the room behind it.

The office was a pleasant enough space, Caleb realised immediately. It was furnished in a similar style to the rest of the house, with well-made furniture of dark wood contrasted with hangings of bright, patterned fabrics. A large desk sat to one side, clearly well-polished and maintained even beneath the dust that coated it, and across the room from it were rows of bookshelves, with a large wooden filing cabinet standing beside the wide window that flooded light into the space. There was a comfortable-looking chair, too, and a paper-tray on the desk, but Caleb didn’t find himself moving immediately to those. He stepped through the door, his fingers slipping off the cool metal of the doorknob, and found his feet carrying him around and behind the desk, towards the large framed photograph that hung on the wall behind it.

It wasn’t a huge image, not in the same way that some of the portraits and paintings in the house were, but it commanded Caleb’s attention like nothing else in the room did. It was, much like so many of the paintings in the house, an image of Gustav and his two sons, the three of them standing by some sufficiently elegant and refined looking part of the outside of the house. The sepia tones of it were faded somewhat, the image slightly blurry due to its sheer size, but Caleb was impressed all the same. Photographs were not cheap, and large ones even less so. And it seemed that, just as with the portraits, even in a photograph Caleb found that his gaze was still drawn to Mollymauk above all.

Mollymauk was, unsurprisingly, smiling, his eyes crinkling slightly and his lips curved upwards in a wide, nearly teasing grin. His hair seemed to be sparkling in the sunlight, and it took Caleb a few moments to realise that there was some sort of jewelled accessory resting on one side of his head, matching the jewellery that hung from his ears and horns. Molly’s dress, however, was surprisingly subdued – Caleb could only imagine the cajoling that had been required to convince the tiefling to abandon his more vibrant items of clothing – but as Caleb looked closer he realised that Molly was, in fact, in the same symbol-embroidered waistcoat that he had been considering bringing to the séance. It was just the monochrome colours of the photograph that made it appear subdued, draining it of the colour and boldness that was so indicative of Mollymauk. Caleb suspected that, were he not so adept at recognising Mollymauk over his brother, he may well have had a hard time telling them apart. Molly’s tattoos were still evident in the photography but they appeared washed out and faded, the bright sunlight and muted palette leaching them of their normal blues and greens and teals, and Caleb had to lean in a little to see them better. They were there, though, as was Mollymauk’s jewellery, hanging from his horns and his ears and sparkling in the sunlight. His smile was there, too. That, more than anything else, was how Caleb had identified Mollymauk. Only Molly had that smile, that wide and delighted grin that made his breath catch in his throat just for a second. Only Molly could smile with just a hint of a smirk, with just a touch of something _more_.

Lucien couldn’t. Lucien _didn’t_.

Lucien was standing beside Molly, his hair neatly swept back and his lips upturned in a faint, polite smile. Even with the sepia tones of the photograph Caleb could tell that his outfit was already more muted than Molly’s, showing few patterns or areas of embroidery or interest. He was dressed in a neat-looking frock coat of heavy, dull fabric which hung open over a tidy suit, with little adornment or decoration save for the buttons of the coat, which appeared to have some sort of marking on them. Caleb frowned a little, peering in closer until his nose was nearly touching the glass. He wasn’t mistaken, he was sure of it. The photograph was a little bit blurry, being the size that it was, but care had been taken in its printing and it was well-preserved beneath the glass, still showing clearly despite the years of sunlight that had fallen across it. There was definitely something on Lucien’s buttons.

Caleb shifted slightly, blocking the light streaming through the window, and paused.

On every single one of Lucien’s coat buttons, the design engraved into the smooth, shining metal, was a single image of an eye.

From upstairs, Caleb heard a soft clattering sound, followed by the sound of muffled voices, but he didn’t pay it any attention. He lifted a hand, touching one finger to the glass over one of Lucien’s buttons. He’d seen coats with similar embellishments before but only in Rexxentrum, and part of him wondered if the coat was originally Mollymauk’s, but he quickly dismissed that thought. Mollymauk, he knew, tended to prefer slightly more form-fitting and tailored items of clothing. The coat was clearly well-tailored, following the sharp lines of Lucien’s body, but it lacked the slight degree of androgyny that so many of Molly’s clothes seemed to have. It was the sort of coat that Caleb had seen worn by the bankers and businesspeople who would occasionally come into Bryce’s office in Zadash, smelling of wealth and money and far too many laws and rules and loopholes, and would try to demand their client’s way into an inheritance that wasn’t theirs to own. It wasn’t the sort of coat that belonged here. It wasn’t the sort of coat that he had expected Lucien to own.

Caleb leaned back from the photograph. What did he really know about Lucien, though? Not much, not really, not in the same way that he knew about Mollymauk. He knew that Lucien was likely still alive, and that he was to receive half of his father’s fortune in material wealth, and that he was quieter and more studious, and in every way more Caleb’s type than his twin should have been. He knew that Lucien visited Rexxentrum. He knew that Lucien had been looking into potential business dealings. For all he knew, he could have picked up the coat there.

“Caleb?” a voice called from the end of the hallway, and Caleb stepped back, not yet turning to face the open door. He didn’t want to look away from the photograph, from Molly’s bright and magnetic smile.

“ _Ja_?” he called back, and a moment later he heard footsteps approaching. He turned his head then, looking to see Beau approaching, Nott trailing behind her.

Beau inclined her head towards the halfling. “We’re done,” she said. “Nott picked the lock on Lucien’s room. I don’t know if there’s anything else in there that needs to be picked because neither of us wanted to set foot in that creepy fucking room, but if turns out that there is, let us know.”

“You’d better be paying for any more picked locks, though,” Nott added, glancing up at the walls around her. “This place is creepy. It feels… off.”

“It is a bit… breezy at times,” Caleb said cautiously, unsure of how much Nott knew, and Beau immediately sighed loudly, rolling her eyes.

“Yeah,” she muttered, _“breezy_. C’mon, Caleb, you know that isn’t what she means. This whole house is creepy as fuck, okay? And I can be mean to the house – I used to live here, so I should know what it should feel like, and it shouldn’t feel like this. This is all… I don’t know, all prickly and weird. Makes me feel like I’m being watched.”

_You are_ , Caleb thought to himself, watching as, in the hallway behind her, a door quietly drifted open an inch or two. Nothing came through it, or gave any indication of having opened it, but Caleb knew what it was. He recognised who was there. He recognised who was always there. He smiled, just a little bit. _I hope you are enjoying seeing your friend again, Mollymauk_.

“What the _fuck_ was that?” Beau snapped suddenly, turning quickly on the spot. “Nott, was that you? Did you touch my shoulder?”

Nott stepped back, raising her hands. “Not me!” she said quickly. “I mean I can’t even reach you from here! I couldn’t have done it!”

“Caleb?”

“I am standing opposite you, Beauregard. You would have seen me move.”

Beau glared at him, her eyes narrowed. “It was one of you,” she insisted. “I felt _something_. There was- something fuckin’ touched me, alright, I’m not being funny here. Something touched me.”

“A spiderweb?” Nott suggested, and Beau shook her head.

“I know what a fucking spiderweb feels like, Nott. This was, like, _heavy_.”

“Heavy how?”

“Like someone was _touching me_ , okay? Like someone had put their hand on my shoulder, only it was absolutely fuckin’ _freezing_ cold. _That’s_ what it felt like. Not some shitty little spiderweb.”

“This is _weird_ ,” Nott muttered, taking another step back as she wrapped her arms around herself. “This is- this whole place is _creepy_.”

“Something fucking touched me, okay, I swear it-”

“I think it was Mollymauk,” Caleb interrupted softly. His words were quiet, barely audible over Beau and Nott’s voices, but the moment he spoke Beau fell silent and turned to face him, her face dropping into an expression of suspicion mixed with what Caleb almost thought was hope. He swallowed, nodding to the corridor around them. “It was- I think that may have been Mollymauk?”

“ _Mollymauk?_ ” Nott asked, her voice rising in pitch to a shriek as Beau continued to merely stare at him, unspeaking. “You mean like- isn’t he dead, though? As in – and I’m sorry, Beau, I know he was your friend – _super_ dead? Dead-for-several-years dead? Should-be-a-skeleton dead?”

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb acknowledged. He didn’t look away from Beau. “That Mollymauk.”

“But how can he be _here_?”

Caleb shrugged. Here, in the face of Nott’s immediate confusion and panic, he couldn’t help but be oddly grateful for the calm certainty of Caduceus, and for how, over the last week or so, he had gradually grown accustomed to the odd going ons at the house. It hadn’t been too long ago that he had been much like Nott.

It hadn’t been too long ago that he hadn’t believed in ghosts either.

“I don’t know,” he said simply. “He is definitely dead, we know that much, but he is… some part of him hasn’t, um, hasn’t quite moved on. I think that is the way it is normally explained. Some part of him is still here.”

“I’m going to be staying out of this,” Nott said from somewhere behind Beau. “Actually, I think I’m going to go and see if that very nice Mr Clay is still waiting for me out front. I think I’ll wait with him until you’re ready to go, Beau.”

“Yeah,” Beau replied vaguely, her eyes never once leaving Caleb’s face. “Yeah, sure, you do that.”

Caleb swallowed. “I- Beauregard-”

“Tell me why,” Beau said. Her voice was soft, low and very nearly dangerous, and something about it made the hairs on the back of Caleb’s neck stand up. “Tell me why it was Molly. Tell me how you know. Tell me _why_ you know.”

There was no space for argument in her words. There was no space for discussion, or deflection, or for anything at all that could have been used to escape their directness.

Caleb swallowed, feeling his throat grow dry.

“I-” he started. “I- well, I have, you know… I have been here for a while, and I-”

“Because you said that same shit at Jester’s,” Beau continued quietly. “At Jester’s, you knew that Molly was there before we saw him. You knew that he was there from watching the candle and the breeze and- and all shit like that. But I was, for obvious reasons, a little distracted right then, and it could have just been guesswork on your part. So tell me again. How do you know that it’s Molly?”

Caleb opened his mouth, but there were no words to say. He didn’t know how to describe how knew that it was Molly who he felt. He didn’t know how to describe the difference between a breeze due to a half-open window and a breeze that was Mollymauk. He just knew him, recognised him and his actions as though he had known him all his life, but there was no good way to say that. There was no good way to describe how, at that very moment, Caleb knew that Molly was with them, somewhere in the corridor.

But he had to say something, and so he did.

“I recognise him,” Caleb said quietly, and Beau’s gaze immediately turned to a glare.

“ _How_?”

“I just- I just do.”

“…Bullshit.”

“It’s not.”

“Then _tell me_ how you know!”

“It is- there are a lot of things, Beauregard!” Caleb said, raising his arms to gesture vaguely at the space around them. “It is- he likes to flicker candle flames to get my attention, okay? And if that does not work, then he uses the breeze to interact with me as best he can. He likes- he likes to move papers around, and I think that when he gets bored, he pushes on the candlesticks, and he plays with the curtains and occasionally the- the ribbon that I tie my hair with, and I just _recognise him_. That is all that it is. I cannot explain it better than that. I know that he is here. I know that that was him.” Caleb lifted his head, meeting Beau’s gaze, and drew in a breath, slowing his heart. “Please,” he said quietly. “Trust me on this.”

There was a long, silent pause.

“Alright,” Beau said eventually. “I… alright. Fine. Now… show me. Show me, like… the shit that Molly does.”

“I can’t-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know that you can’t _actually_ make Molly do shit, alright? I’m not stupid. But you can- you’re interacting with him. And I…” Beau trailed off, falling silent for a moment, and then continued, quieter, “…I want to do that. I want to talk to him again. However I can.”

Inside his chest, Caleb felt something shatter.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “I- okay.” He held out a hand just before him, turning it over until it was palm-up, hanging in the air between him and Beauregard. “As Caduceus explained to me, Mollymauk cannot do much as a ghost,” he continued, his voice soft in the silence of the hallway. “He cannot interact with us the way that we can interact with each other, and so he has to find… compromises. There are certain things that he can move and interact with, and he can use those as a- a- a medium of communication. This is one of them.”

Against his palm, Caleb felt the breeze starting to sigh in soft, gentle strokes. It was a familiar touch to him now, one that brought more comfort than panic, and almost without thinking he flexed his hand, feeling the breeze slipping down between his fingers, pressing close against his skin. He smiled.

“This is one of them,” he repeated, and felt the breeze twining around his ankle as though anchoring itself. Beau looked at him, her expression starting to lose its suspicious edge, and, before he could stop himself, Caleb gestured at her hand. “Go on,” he said quietly. “Try. It’s just Mollymauk. It’s alright.”

Beau swallowed. “I-” she started, before cutting herself off, her voice sounding almost choked. “I- are you sure? You better not be fucking with me-”

“I’m not,” Caleb said quickly. “I promise. Just… hold your hand out. Just hold your hand out – _ja_ , just like that – and just… wait. Just wait. That is all. He is not far away.”

“How do you _know_?”

“Because I can feel him holding my hand,” Caleb replied quietly. His words were as level as he could make them, presented as nothing more than a statement of fact, but Beauregard narrowed her eyes all the same. “Because I can feel his fingers between my own, and because I can feel what I believe is his tail around my ankle, Beauregard. I have been here for a while. You are not a stupid person, and neither am I. Please, trust me on this.”

For a long, silent moment, Beau did nothing.

“Please,” Caleb said again, his words even quieter than before. “Please, Beauregard. Trust me.”

“…Fine.”

Against his waist, Caleb felt the touch of something gentle, and cool, and entirely familiar, and then it shifted, moving away from him. He smiled. “Thank you,” he said.

Beau nodded jerkily. “Yeah, sure, you’re welcome. Now what do I-”

Caleb could see the moment she felt Mollymauk’s touch. Her whole body twitched, jolting in place as though struck by lightning, and she yanked her arm up and away, her face going pale.

“What was- was that-”

“It’s alright,” Caleb said quickly. “It’s alright, that was- that was him. Put your hand out. It’s alright.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Beau breathed. She took a breath, collecting herself, and then slowly lowered her arm back into the position it held before. Caleb saw nothing in her hand, saw nothing that resembled a tiefling in any way, but a moment later he saw her fingers flexing and squeezing, and he knew that she felt what he did. He knew that, against her palm, she could feel the hand of her best friend. “I- what the _fuck_? How is this- how-”

“I don’t know,” Caleb said. “I don’t- I don’t know. I only know what Caduceus has told me, but I know that this is Mollymauk.”

“He’s- I can _feel him_.”

Caleb nodded. On Beau’s cheeks, tears shone like diamonds. “ _Ja_ ,” he said quietly. “I know you can.” He turned his head slightly, catching a glimpse of purple in the dented, shining silver of the candle sconce, and smiled a little wider. “ _Hallo_ ,” he murmured, and felt Molly squeeze his hand again.

_Hello, Caleb_.

In the stillness and silence of the hallway, Caleb could hear Beau’s breath catching in tiny, stifled sobs. He didn’t look at her, allowing her the privacy and feigned ignorance of her emotions that he felt she would want, and, gradually, her sobs stopped, fading down into nothingness over a handful of minutes.

Another minute passed, and then Beauregard spoke.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “I’m- alright.”

Caleb looked back at her. There were no more tears on her cheeks but her eyes were red, a little puffy and swollen. “You see, don’t you?” he asked, and Beau nodded.

“Yeah,” she said. She dropped her hand and Caleb followed suit, feeling Molly’s touch fade, and then Beau sighed, soft and sad. “…Nott’s waiting for me,” she mumbled.

“ _Ja_.”

“I should… I should go.”

“I suppose so,” Caleb said quietly. “Although… you know that you are always welcome here, right? You are- this was your house for a long, long time, Beauregard. You are always welcome here.”

“…Thanks, Caleb,” Beau replied. She reached out, and for a moment Caleb was worried that she was going to hit him, but then she clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re- thanks.”

“Of course.”

They walked the rest of the way to the door in silence. Caleb opened it for her, shivering a little at the cold air that blew in, but Beau didn’t seem to mind, moving forwards to leave before stilling abruptly.

“Caleb?” Beau asked, pausing with one foot still inside the house. “Do you- how do you think Molly knew? That it was me?”

Caleb frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s dead, right? I mean, I should know, I helped bury him and all that, but… at the séance, he was _there_. He could, like, see us and all that. But we can’t see him here, and Caduceus said some stuff on the way up that…” Beau trailed off, shaking her head with a sigh. “It just- it made me think.”

“What did he say?” Caleb asked, though he felt that he already knew the answer. He’d spoken to Caduceus often enough.

Beau shrugged. “Something about- well, he said that he was worried, actually. He thought that Molly might get confused with all the new activity at the house. Said something about it ‘throwing him off’ or ‘confusing him’ or something like that. I don’t know. It didn’t sound good, though, I know that much.”

“Oh. Well, I do not know about that. Caduceus has told me that it can be difficult for gho- for Mollymauk to see into our world at times, but I… you were his friend for a long time, _ja_?”

“Yeah,” Beau replied. “Yeah, I was. One of his best friends. He was my fucking _brother_.”

“ _Ja, ja,_ I know. You were very close. And I am- I am not Caduceus, you know, but…” Caleb trailed off, shrugging. “I think that, perhaps, it is easier for him to tell that you are there. He is familiar with you. He knows how you act, and how you interact with the world, and he knows how you react to things. For as long as you are acting like yourself, he will know that you are there.”

Beau’s face softened. “Yeah?” she asked, hope hanging behind her words. “Do you- you think that?”

“I do,” Caleb replied. “I really do. He _knows_ you, Beauregard, and he may like me for- well, for whatever reasons that he does, but he doesn’t- he doesn’t know me. Not really. If he can recognise me, he can recognise you. You are not forgotten to him. I was there at the séance, Beau. You are important to him. That much can’t be denied.”

Beauregard looked away. In the weak winter sunlight, Caleb thought he saw tears shining in her eyes before she lifted a hand and brushed them away.

“Beauregard,” Caleb said quietly, and without thinking he reached out, laying a hand on her shoulder. To his surprise, she didn’t flinch away – instead she lifted a hand, covering his own as she returned his gaze, her face unexpectedly open. Caleb didn’t smile, but he felt his face soften slightly. Despite their first meeting, despite everything, he found that he liked Beauregard. He liked her drive, and her determination, and he liked the very real fondness and friendship for Mollymauk that dwelled beneath the anger and the pain. He liked how clearly she wanted to help. He liked how obviously she was pushing past her own dislike of him to help the memory of her friend.

Caleb hoped that, one day, he and Beauregard might become friends too.

He squeezed her shoulder, just once. “I will not stop until I know what happened to Mollymauk,” he said quietly, and every word was a promise. “I will not stop looking, and I will not stop searching, and I will find out what happened to him. Even if I never return to Bryce, even if I leave this job as you once did, I will find out what happened to Mollymauk.” Around his hand he felt Beauregard’s fingers twitch, briefly squeezing his hand, and he squeezed her shoulder again. This wasn’t just his job. It wasn’t just his duty. Mollymauk was, for some reason, important to him, but Caleb had never known him in life, and he knew it. He never knew him the way that Beauregard did. He didn’t have that deep, indescribable friendship with him that Beau did.

Caleb smiled. It was a small thing, barely there, but it existed, and after a moment Beauregard’s lips twitched as she returned it with a miniscule smile of her own. “ _We_ will find out what happened to Mollymauk,” Caleb said. “I know that we will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be posted on **October 30th!**
> 
> Also, for those who want to skip such scenes, please be aware that next chapter the fics rating will be changed to **explicit**.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Please note the changed fic rating and be aware that the following chapter is primarily a smut chapter. Thank you.**

The days continued, and the mystery of Mollymauk’s death didn’t get any clearer.

For a while, Caleb tried his hand at attempting to both chase the mystery around Mollymauk’s demise as well as carrying out his actual job, but it was an endeavour that quickly failed. He kept finding himself being drawn back to Mollymauk’s death like a moth to a flame, leaving his other work by the wayside as, with every passing hour, he fell further down the rabbithole of confusion and uncertainty. There was so much to see and so much to read, and since gaining access to Gustav’s office the piles of paperwork on the dining room table had only increased in size. Caleb had been trying to go through them all and categorise them correctly, but even with Mollymauk’s help it had been a struggle. There was just _so much_ , so many years of letters and documents and journals and countless other things that should have been Gustav’s last will but _weren’t_. Caleb could swear that he had scoured every inch of the study, and yet he still hadn’t found it.

He just had to hope that the reason he hadn’t found it wasn’t because it was, somehow, in Lucien’s room.

Caleb had been avoiding Lucien’s room, and he knew it. Something about it unsettled him in a manner that he didn’t know how to describe, and he knew that that he didn’t want to step foot inside it without someone else – ideally, Beauregard – standing by his side. He wasn’t sure what it was about the room that put him off. He’d walked up to it shortly after Beauregard and Nott had left on the day that the door had been unlocked, fully intending on exploring it in an attempt to glean some further information about the individual who had dwelled there, but he’d only managed to get the door open before freezing just outside the doorway. There was nothing about the room that was unsettling, nothing that marked it as something other or different – it looked rather similar to Mollymauk’s room, with beautiful, well-made furniture and a few hangings and decorations scattered about to bring some more life into the room. But where Mollymauk’s room was a faded but still riotous explosion of colour, Lucien’s room was more subdued, in keeping with everything that Caleb had heard and seen of him. It was quieter, calmer, almost to the point of being impersonal. It looked just like any other bedroom. It looked a good deal nicer than many bedrooms that Caleb had seen in his time.

He didn’t want to enter it alone.

And so, he hadn’t. Besides, he reasoned, he had more than enough paperwork to deal with as it was. It was getting close to evening now and he’d been pouring over the sheets of paper all day, occasionally rising to fetch food or stretch out the kinks in his spine but otherwise remaining motionless, frowning at the papers and writing the odd note down in his notebook. He could feel a headache gathering behind his temples, brewing slowly but steadily as the day progressed. It wasn’t debilitating, wasn’t uncomfortable enough to stop him from thinking and focusing, but Caleb knew that, with time, it would get there. He’d encountered a number of similar cases in the past, where the will was convoluted, or parts were missing, or family members proved to be difficult and the whole situation became akin to a waking nightmare of paperwork and people, but there had never been anything of this scale. He’d never before found himself so thoroughly waylaid by a mystery that shouldn’t really have affected his job at all, and yet he was. And yet, here he was, with papers strewn about him and a headache clinging to the inside of his skull.

Caleb undid the top few buttons of his shirt as he leant back in his chair, exhaling a long, exhausted sigh. There was so much to think about, so much to consider and go over, and at the same time there was nothing at all that he could focus on. Nothing he read, nothing he heard, nothing he found gave him any indication of firmer footing. He knew now that Molly’s death had been a murder, but he felt that he had known that long before he had been given the true coroner’s report. He knew that Mollymauk and Lucien’s sibling relationship had been a tricky one in places, but he’d gathered that that was a common situation between siblings. He felt that Lucien was alive but he couldn’t be certain, and he knew that he had an actual, proper, professional job to do, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. There was so much, and there wasn’t anything at all, and he hated it.

“ _Scheiße_ ,” Caleb muttered. He lifted a hand, rubbing at his temples as he shut his eyes. The headache that had been gathering all day was stronger now, drumming against his skull like thunder roiling through heavy stormclouds. It wasn’t massively painful yet but it was enough to be an annoyance and, much to Caleb’s displeasure, he found that rubbing at his temples did nothing at all to dispel the growing discomfort. “ _Scheiße_ ,” he muttered again, the word followed by a low, frustrated groan. “ _Scheiße,_ fuck, _verdammt noch mal.”_ He pulled his hand away from his head, groaning again, and then froze.

Against his skin, pressing cold into the bones of his skull, he felt the faint, barely-there pressure of the breeze.

Caleb sighed. The touch was soothing against his throbbing skull, stealing the dull pain away and quieting his thoughts until he almost felt like he could think again. “Thank you,” he murmured. He tilted his head slightly, giving the breeze – giving Mollymauk - the space to move across his skin, cooling him slowly. It was nice, gentle and calming, and he sighed at the touch of it, relaxing in his chair. Beneath the table, he felt a single line of cool air wrap around his ankle, just beneath the fabric of his trousers, and he shivered. That was nice, too. It felt familiar, grounding him despite its ghostly, supernatural origin. Caleb was almost surprised at how little Mollymauk startled him these days. It had barely been any time at all, and yet he had already come to accept that he was sharing this house with a spirit who had, not so long ago, been trying so very hard to scare him away from the house. Mollymauk didn’t seem scary anymore. He could be surprising at times, could startle Caleb when he looked up to unexpectedly see Molly through the mirror, the tiefling perched on the edge of the table and watching him with a smile, but he wasn’t scary. He wasn’t discomforting. He was just Mollymauk.

He was just Mollymauk, who’s touch Caleb could now feel running down his neck, pressing gently against his shoulders as though trying to massage away the tension that had gathered there. Caleb sighed again, shifting a little in his seat. The pressure was almost annoyingly faint, just present enough to be felt but too distant to actually do anything to help relieve the tension.

“Mollymauk,” Caleb murmured, and the breeze shifted again. “Mollymauk, you are- I appreciate this, I assure you that I do, but it is not- I do not think it will help the tension much, with you being, ah… as you are.”

Immediately, the breeze vanished.

Caleb opened his eyes. “Mollymauk?” he asked quietly. The room was silent around him, still and motionless save for where the candles flickered and swayed. “Are you- I did not mean to upset you, I was just-”

The door rattled, jumping slightly in its frame, making Caleb jump. “Mollymauk?” he asked again. He looked around, glancing up into the mirror opposite him, but saw nothing save for the candle flames, dancing above their wicks. He opened his mouth, about to speak again when, all at once, the flames of the candles shifted and swayed in towards the door.

Caleb frowned. “Do you want me to leave?” he asked, feeling confused.

The candles flickered again. It didn’t feel like a disagreement, and it didn’t feel angry or annoyed. Caleb reworded his question.

“Do you want me to go somewhere?” he asked, and a moment later the breeze sighed around him as the door handle turned, and the door slowly creaked open. The hallway beyond it was dim, just barely touched by the sunlight filtering through the windows, but it didn’t look ominous. It just looked like a hallway. “Do you- along the hallway?”

The breeze sighed gently, making the candles flicker again. _Yes_.

“Will you give me any indication of what you wish to show me?”

A pause, followed by the soft rattle of windowpanes. _No_.

Despite himself, Caleb smiled. He felt better now in the wake of Mollymauk’s soothing touch, but he still felt tense, his whole body made tight by stress and frustration. Perhaps a short walk to whatever it was that Molly wanted to show him would do him good. Perhaps it would help.

Equally well, perhaps not. But either way, Caleb was going to follow Mollymauk’s suggestions. After all, he had no reason not to.

“Alright,” he said, and rose from his chair. “Alright, if you insist. Show me where to go, Mollymauk.”

The candles danced once again, and Caleb followed the indications of Mollymauk out of the room, and into the hallway beyond.

For whatever reason, Mollymauk seemed to be leading Caleb upstairs. Caleb followed him along the corridor and across the hall, catching glimpses of him in the mirrors and in the reflective shine of the glass panes of the windows, and then he followed the breeze upstairs, until he was standing just before his bedroom door. With a soft, creaking groan it opened before him, and, feeling a little uncertain now, Caleb stepped through.

“Mollymauk?” he asked, hearing the door click shut behind him, though he had not touched it. “Why am I here?”

The breeze gave no response, but after a moment Caleb saw one of the blankets laid at the end of the bed shifting slightly, the dust that dwelled beneath the bed being stirred up by something unseen. He frowned but approached all the same, walking slowly and carefully so as not to disturb the dust.

“Do you want to show me something?” he asked, and the dust swirled again, retreating underneath the bed. “Something… is it under there?”

The breeze skimmed across the back of his neck, just briefly, and then returned to playing with the dust. _Yes_.

Slowly, cautiously, Caleb knelt. He’d never had any cause to look under Mollymauk’s bed before, save to check to see if Frumpkin was there, and he’d never paid much attention to the scattered boxes that dwelled beneath it. For a moment he was unsure of what, exactly, he was supposed to be looking at, but then the dust shifted again, and Caleb found that his gaze was drawn to one box in particular.

He swallowed. “Mollymauk-”

 _Yes_ , the breeze sighed.

Caleb reached out, picking up the box from under the bed. It was a small, flat thing, no bigger than a large envelope, and from the faded design embossed on the lid and the smoothness of the solid, heavy card that formed it, he got the impression it may, at one point, have been a jewellery box.

“Is this it?” he murmured. He straightened up, moving to take a seat at the end of the bed without ever once moving his gaze from the box in his hands. It wasn’t heavy but there was an undeniable aspect of weight to it all the same, as though it contained something precious and important that didn’t weigh as much as gold or gems. “Is this what you wanted me to find?”

The breeze sighed, skimming over Caleb’s hand and stroking over the lid of the box, disturbing that dust that had settled. _Yes_.

“Do you want me to open it?”

 _Yes_.

“Is there something important in here?”

Mollymauk’s response was not so apparent this time. There was no immediate gust of wind to indicate his answer, and after a short pause Caleb frowned, lifting his head to look into the mirror that rested on the vanity opposite the bed. He could see himself in it clear as day, sitting at the foot of Molly’s bed with the box in his hands and just a few curls of hair showing above his open shirt collar, but there was no sign of purple. There was no tiefling.

“Mollymauk?” Caleb asked quietly. He ran his thumb across the lid of the box, feeling the embossed design beneath his skin. “What is this?”

Once again, the breeze brushed over his hand, but it felt more insistent now, pushing gently against his knuckles and curling around his fingers. _Open it_.

“Are you sure?”

A huff, a breath of silent, impossible laughter, laced through with something that Caleb didn’t know how to describe. _Yes_.

Caleb smiled. He didn’t know what Mollymauk had led him to, but he trusted him. Whatever it was, Molly wanted him to see this. “Alright,” he said. “Thank you.”

Caleb opened the box, and the first thing that he saw made heat flood through his veins.

Inside, resting atop a small, flat velvet necklace-holder, was a scattered stack of photographs. They were all quite small, none of them larger than six inches in length, and each and every one of them was of Mollymauk.

Caleb swallowed, unable to stop his gaze from darting to one area in particular on the first photo that he saw.

Each and every photograph was of Mollymauk, and in each and every one of them he was almost entirely nude.

Caleb didn’t count the photos in the box, but he knew that there must be at least ten of them. He could see others peeking out from beneath the one that he was fixated on, offering tantalising glimpses of silk and satin and skin, but he didn’t move the top-most photo. He couldn’t. He could feel his heart starting to pick up, could feel the heat flushing his face and making him feel just a touch uncomfortable beneath his clothes, but he didn’t look away. He didn’t think he would ever be able to look away from what he saw.

In the photo, Molly was lounging across his bed, half-propped up with pillows with his legs delicately crossed at the ankle. His tail wound around them, adorned with rings that shone and sparkled in the soft, intimate light that illuminated him, and Caleb couldn’t stop his gaze from following the long, beautiful line of Mollymauk’s legs, tracing over the stockings that clung to them and swallowing when he noticed the garter belt they clipped to. Caleb couldn’t tell the colour of it, not with the sepia tones of the photograph, but it looked to be the same colour as the delicate negligee that Mollymauk was wearing, the lace hugging against his skin and just hiding enough to hint at more. Caleb could see Mollymauk’s tattoos now more clearly than he ever had, could see how the flowers wound down his arm and how the peacock feathers wrapped around his body, just barely finishing beneath his lingerie, but somehow that interrupting of ink just made him look all the more alluring. It made Caleb want to reach out and into the photo, made him want to run his hands over the lace and feel the softness of it beneath his palms, made him want to touch Molly’s body and feel Molly’s skin and then kneel down between Molly’s legs and let Molly tangle a hand in his hair and take from Caleb whatever he wished to take.

Between his own legs, Caleb felt himself starting to stir with interest. He swallowed, trying to distract himself with something, _anything_ other than the image of Molly before him, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t take his eyes off the photo.

He didn’t want to.

Molly’s hair was done up, too, but in Caleb’s distracted state it took him quite a while to notice that it was done up at all. It looked casual, effortless, but the waves of it framed Molly’s face perfectly, and all through it Caleb could see tiny, shimmering pearls nestled amongst the curls. He couldn’t imagine the time that Molly had put into putting together the outfit, or dressing himself up, or even setting up the camera to take the photo. He couldn’t imagine how much time Molly had spent on his make-up, on darkening his lashes and painting shadows on his lids, and on staining his lips a colour that made it almost impossible for Caleb to look away. Even with no shades present beyond brown and gold, Caleb knew that Molly’s lips must have been dark, and beautiful, and as red as sin.

Against his neck, he felt the breeze touch in a soft, gentle sigh. It slipped across his skin, caressing his throat and jaw before slipping down, stroking an immaterial line down the length of his side. Caleb shivered. Even through the layer of his shirt he could feel the chill of Mollymauk’s touch, and against his now-warm skin it only felt colder still, starker and more apparent and more undeniably, absolutely wanted. He _wanted_ Molly’s touch. He wanted Molly’s touch, and Molly’s hands, and he wanted Molly in that between-space that they shared. He wanted to remember what happened there. He wanted to know what Molly looked like when Caleb touched him.

But he couldn’t. He _shouldn’t_. Molly wasn’t- he didn’t- he wasn’t _alive_. He wasn’t alive, and Caleb shouldn’t be having such thoughts about a dead man. It felt _rude_ , more than anything, as if he was disrespecting the memory of a man he had never even known, but he couldn’t stop his heart from beating faster the longer he looked over the image, unable to tear his gaze away from Molly’s sly, knowing smile, and the slight darkness in his cheeks, and the way his lips were just barely parted. Caleb wanted to touch them. He wanted to feel them against his own, and he wanted to see if the stain of Molly’s lipstick would dwell on his own lips, and he wanted to see those stunning, gorgeous, wine-dark lips wrapped around his cock. Unconsciously he found his hand moving, drifting towards his crotch, but he quickly snatched it back. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t _allowed_.

Except, it seemed, that it was.

Caleb was no fool. He’d been in this house long enough now to pick up on how Molly communicated, in his strange, immaterial way. He knew how to read Molly’s words and Molly’s intentions in the actions of the house around him, knew how to watch the dancing of a candle flame and the swaying of a curtain and read Molly’s agreement or approval, knew how to read Molly’s amusement in the breeze or his disagreement in the rattle and thump of window panes. He knew what Molly was saying.

He knew what Mollymauk was saying now.

“Mollymauk,” Caleb murmured, and the breeze sighed again, returning to his neck even as the original touch stayed above his hip. He could feel the regular pattern of the breeze against his neck, could recognise it for what it was, and he shivered. “I’m- _Mollymauk_.”

The breeze shifted, pressing more closely to the skin beneath his jaw, resting just above his pulse point in a light, almost cautious touch. It was cold, chill against Caleb’s flushed skin, but it was far from unwelcome. Unthinking, Caleb tilted his head a bit, giving Molly better access to his neck. He felt hot, feeling sweat gathering on his skin for all that, beyond the windows, frost clung to the trees to gild them in sparkling silver. He couldn’t look away from the photos. He didn’t know if he wanted to.

But at the same time, he didn’t know what to do.

He couldn’t deny that he was interested in what he saw, or that his body was responding accordingly. He’d known for a while now that he was attracted to Mollymauk, had known that he found Molly enticing, and alluring, and altogether distracting and seductive in the strange between-space of his dreams. This, though… this was a different thing altogether, and it settled strangely in Caleb’s mind. His dreams, while odd, were nevertheless his, even if Mollymauk made an appearance in them. That was his realm, shared as it was; it was where his fantasies existed, and where they had always existed, and where they would continue to exist. It was okay to want, there. It was okay to look at Mollymauk and long to touch and be touched.

These photos were not his. Caleb didn’t know who they had been intended for, didn’t know if Mollymauk had taken them simply for his own amusement or to gift to some partner (and _Gods_ , but what a lucky partner they would be), but he knew that he couldn’t make himself look away from them. These were real. These weren’t like his dreams. There was no dream-Mollymauk lounging in these photos, all dressed up in silk and pearls like lust and allure itself made flesh. There was only Mollymauk as he once had been, and Caleb wanted him more desperately than breath.

And Mollymauk wanted him to want him. Mollymauk had led him here. Mollymauk had shown him this box, and encouraged him to open it.

 _Mollymauk wants this_ , Caleb thought, and finally looked up at the room around him.

Across the room from him, the peacock feathers swayed and danced gently in their vase. _It’s alright_ , Caleb read in them, in the bowing of their heads and the play of winter sunlight across their dust-faded colours. _It’s alright. I want this. I showed you these for a reason, Caleb_.

Caleb swallowed. He tried to speak but felt his words get stuck in his throat, choked up by desire and want. “Are you- are - _Mollymauk_.”

Molly laughed against his neck again, as silent as ever. _I’m sure_ , he seemed to be saying. _I want this_.

“I- should I-”

 _Yes_.

Slowly, uncertainly, Caleb reached down, his hand drifting across his thigh. His touch felt hot through the fabric of his trousers, warm and enticing, and he shifted a little, feeling himself growing harder still. He could do this. He could want this. It was alright.

All the same, he wanted to ask again. All the same, he wanted to be sure. “Mollymauk-”

This time, the breeze didn’t even let him finish. It skimmed across the back of his hand, twining through his fingers, and, with a gentle, barely-there touched, nudged his hand down further.

 _Yes_.

With Molly’s encouragement, Caleb reached down, undid his trousers with fumbling, shaking fingers, and took himself in hand.

The first touch of his fingers around his cock made him gasp. He was hard, achingly so, and the sound of his breathless voice seemed to hang in the air around him, held and adored by the shadows that clung to the corners of the room. He hadn’t touched himself like this in a while, certainly not since coming to the house, and though he’d experienced the aftermath of such events since his arrival, it was a different thing altogether to be present for the entirety of them. Here, outside of his dreams, he could actually _feel_ everything – he could feel his touch, and the weight of his hand, and he almost fancied that, from the shadowed corners of the room, he could feel the presence of Mollymauk watching.

The thought alone was enough to make Caleb shiver. Whether it was with want or discomfort he couldn’t be sure. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He wasn’t certain that he _wanted_ to be sure. He just knew that the thought of Mollymauk watching made something inside him pulse hot and heavy, sending heat coiling through his gut.

Caleb ran his fingers up his shaft, keeping the touch light for now, but it was enough to make him moan again, his breath stuttering out from him. He knew what touches he liked, and he knew how to tease himself, and, right now, that seemed like the best thing to do. He was already hard and aching just from looking at the one single photograph of Mollymauk, and he knew that, if he didn’t pace himself, he wouldn’t last long at all. And he wanted to last. He wanted to enjoy this. He could still feel some part of his mind objecting, reminding him of how very deceased Mollymauk was, and of how Caleb was in Mollymauk’s bedroom, and how he _shouldn’t be doing this_ , but the vast majority of his thoughts were overcome with lust and longing, and the knowledge of Mollymauk’s approval. He could do this. He could enjoy this.

He could look at this photograph of Molly, and imagine how it would feel to run his hands over the lace clinging to his body, and feel the warmth of his skin beneath it, and touch himself to those thoughts. He could think of touching Molly, kissing Molly, of reaching beneath those _beautiful,_ delicate panties and taking Molly in hand and hearing him gasp beneath Caleb’s own touch. Caleb shut his eyes at that, groaning soft and low in his throat. Gods, _yes_. He wanted that. He wanted to hear Mollymauk moan beneath him. He wanted to hear Molly’s hurried, panting breaths, wanted to hear him groan and curse and cry out in need and want, wanted to hear him come and know that he had caused it. He wanted to see the look in Mollymauk’s face when he came from Caleb’s touch, from Caleb’s mouth, and he wanted Molly to know that he wanted to do it.

He wanted to know what Mollymauk looked like right now, as Caleb touched himself in his bedroom to images of him.

Against Caleb’s skin, the breeze stroked in a long, slow line. It slid up his arm, trailing over his shoulder, and then skimmed across his collarbone before caressing a line up his throat. It touched beneath his chin, just firm enough to be felt. _Look up_ , it seemed to be saying. _Look up, Caleb._

Caleb had never claimed to be a strong-willed man. He took a breath, feeling it catch in his lungs as he twisted his hand around his cock, and looked up.

What he saw tore a gasp from his throat.

Mollymauk was in the mirror, and he was seated on the bed directly behind Caleb. As Caleb watched Molly’s lips slowly tilted up into a smirk, his tail swaying and swishing until it slipped around Caleb’s side and dipped round towards his ankle, brushing over his leg in a wonderfully familiar touch. It made Caleb shiver, his hand twitching around his cock, and he couldn’t stop his short, breathless gasp. It felt _good_. Mollymauk’s touch felt good. He was barely doing anything, was barely even there, but all the same Caleb ached for the sensation of Mollymauk’s hand against his side, against his skin, around his cock. His fingers twitched again just at the thought of it, just at the idea of looking down and seeing beautiful, perfect, lavender fingers wrapped around his aching cock, and he was powerless to stop the quiet groan that it tore from his throat as heat surged through him.

“ _M-Mollymauk…”_

In the mirror, Mollymauk only smiled wider. Both of his hands were settled on Caleb’s waist now, thumbs brushing back and forth in slow, lazy patterns above the fabric of Caleb’s waistcoat. The touch should have been innocent, almost casual, but the look on Molly’s face and the cock jutting from between Caleb’s legs made it anything but, and it made Caleb _burn_.

Caleb shifted his gaze up, already panting just from this light, barely-there contact, and immediately made eye contact with Molly in the mirror.

Molly tilted his head, just a little bit, and raised one eyebrow.

 _Do you want this?_ he seemed to be saying. He wasn’t smirking quite so much now, his expression closer to a small, soft, delighted smile than anything else, but his gaze was heated, and as Caleb watched, his fist still moving slowly over his own cock, he saw Molly’s fingers twitch against his waist. He felt them, felt the shifting of the breeze and the new pressure behind the cold, immaterial touch, and he ached for it. He wanted it. _Do you want me to touch you?_

Caleb didn’t even think. He’d wanted Mollymauk practically since he first saw him in his dreams, even if he couldn’t articulate why. He wanted Molly’s lips, and Molly’s touch, and he wanted Molly’s hand on his cock, stroking and squeezing as much as he could, however he could. He wanted Molly to want this too.

And it seemed that Molly did. He just needed Caleb’s permission.

“Yes,” Caleb gasped. “I- yes, _ja_ , _bitte_ , please, Mollymauk, I want you- I want you to touch me.”

In the mirror, Molly’s smile turned into a smirk. He turned his head, never once breaking eye contact with Caleb through the mirror as he pressed his lips to Caleb’s neck. Caleb gasped, shivering at the icy touch, but he didn’t lean away. He _couldn’t_. Mollymauk was watching him, one hand on Caleb’s side and one hand slipping down to his thigh, and Caleb could feel his tail winding around his ankle and could see the banked, smouldering _want_ in Molly’s eyes. He knew that it was reflected in his own eyes.

He knew that, despite whatever objections his rational brain was trying to come up with, he wanted this.

He wanted Molly to touch his cock.

Caleb swallowed. “Please,” he whispered. “Please, Mollymauk. Touch me.”

In answer, Mollymauk turned his head, pressing yet more kisses to Caleb’s neck and awfully, achingly, wonderfully slowly, slid his hand down Caleb’s chest.

Molly’s hand wrapped around Caleb’s cock above his own, and Caleb was powerless to stop the moan that it tore from his throat.

“ _A-ah!”_ he cried, feeling his hips twitching, pushing up into Molly’s hand. Molly’s touch was cold against his hand, was icy on the heated skin of his cock, but it was wonderful and impossibly familiar and it felt so, so good. It felt _clear_ , distinctive in a way that nothing else ever had, and it made Caleb feel like he was flushed red all over as pleasure lanced through his veins and settled in along his bone. “ _Ah_ , Mollymauk-!” He groaned, dropping his head forward as that cold touched over his cock again, and then once more after that, the action repeating over and over and over again until Caleb couldn’t even hope to stop himself from whining and groaning. He _wanted_. He was hard, and aching, and he felt hot all the way down to his bones, could feel his shirt sticking to his back and could feel his own hand around his cock and could feel the pre-cum smeared along it and above and around and within it all he could feel Molly. He could feel so much of Molly. There was Molly’s lips, pressing against his throat and jaw over and over again as though painting out a private constellation; there was Molly’s hand on his thigh, running back and forth over the rumbled fabric of his trousers and sinking ice into his skin; there was Molly’s tail on his ankle, squeezing and caressing in turns; there was Molly’s hand on his cock, and it was the most terrible, wonderful thing that Caleb had ever felt.

And then, above and around and within the sound of Caleb’s own ragged, panting breaths, Mollymauk spoke.

“ _Beautiful_ ,” Mollymauk purred, and Caleb very nearly reached completion then and there. Mollymauk’s voice was velvet against his ear, soft and rough and laced with a heat that made him moan, his legs parting as Mollymauk continued to work over his cock. It wasn’t a new thing to hear Mollymauk’s voice, not after the dreams that had now become a regular part of Caleb’s life, but hearing it now, hearing it _here_ , hearing it outside of the between-space where nothing felt entirely real, hearing it in this moment where Mollymauk’s voice and Mollymauk’s words were meant for him and him alone… it was enough to make Caleb squeeze his eyes shut and gasp, overwhelmed just from the sound of Mollymauk speaking against his ear. He moaned lowly, catching his breath in pants and gasps. He couldn’t- he couldn’t _think._ He couldn’t think, and he couldn’t speak, and he couldn’t focus on anything beyond the feeling of Molly’s hand around his cock and his breath against his cheek.

“ _Open your eyes,_ ” Molly murmured, the words purred right into Caleb’s ear. He kept stroking over Caleb’s cock, his fingers laced with Caleb, and the repeating touch of Caleb’s own warm skin contrasted with the iciness of Mollymauk made him groan low in his throat, lightning and heat racing through his veins. “ _Open your eyes, Caleb. See how gorgeous you look_.”

“I- I’m- _Mollymauk_ ,” Caleb managed to gasp. He kept his eyes shut, already overwhelmed. He felt certain that, were he to open his eyes and see what Molly was doing to him, see Molly’s fingers laced through his own and Molly’s gaze running over his body and Molly’s hand pressed against his thigh, keeping his legs spread, he wouldn’t be able to hold himself in check. He was just barely managing to keep himself together as it was. Mollymauk’s touch felt so good, entirely unlike anything else that Caleb had ever felt, and he wanted it more badly than he’d ever wanted anything else.

But he wanted to see. He wanted to know.

And so he slowed his hand, and took a breath, and opened his eyes, and looked.

In the mirror, Mollymauk smiled wide and delighted.

“ _Beautiful_ ,” he purred again. “ _Absolutely beautiful_.”

Somehow, despite all the odds, Caleb found himself inclined to agree with him. He looked utterly wrecked, but he found that he didn’t mind it. His hair had slipped free of the ponytail he tied it back in, cascading around his face in a curtain of auburn, and his shirt was half-undone, the flush that covered his face disappearing beneath the crisp white fabric. His waistcoat was still on, but somehow it just made him look even more debauched with how the smooth, dark material gave way to his open trousers and flushed, erect cock. He could see the head of his cock disappearing beneath his hand, could see the shine of the pre-cum that had gathered on his hand now coating his shaft, and, wrapped around his own hand, was Mollymauk’s, his purple skin a stark contrast against the paleness of Caleb’s own hand. Caleb looked wrecked, and ruined, and thoroughly debauched, but the heat in Mollymauk’s eyes stopped him from feeling as self-conscious about it as he knew he would be normally. He didn’t feel strange and awkward, touching himself to photos of a tiefling that he'd never met. He didn’t feel unwelcome. He just felt flushed with heat, just felt the desire to come and the ache of pleasure thrumming through his veins, and he felt ruined, and filthy, and _wonderful_.

“ _Gods, Caleb, just look at you_ ,” Molly murmured. He turned his head, never once breaking eye contact with Caleb through the mirror as he kissed Caleb’s neck once again. Caleb still couldn’t feel it beyond the touch of the breeze, but somehow watching it made it feel stronger. He thought for a moment that he could feel the shape of Molly’s lips pressing against his pulse, could feel the weight of Molly against his back and the line of Molly’s arm wrapped around his waist. He wanted to feel those. He wanted to feel all of Molly. “ _You’re stunning, darling.”_

“I _\- Ich_ - _”_ Caleb managed to gasp, and Molly laughed quietly, shifting closer against Caleb’s back. Caleb could only barely feel it, could only distantly feel the weight of the breeze pressing against his skin, but some part of him wanted to believe that, nudging against his lower back, he could feel the line of something just a touch more solid. _Gods,_ he wanted that. He wanted to know that he was affecting Mollymauk just as much as Mollymauk was affecting him, wanted to know that Mollymauk was enjoying this just as much as he was, wanted to know that Mollymauk wanted this.

He wanted to know that Mollymauk wanted _him_.

The thought made his cock pulse in his hand. _Fuck_. Somehow, he hadn’t considered that. Somehow, despite Mollymauk’s hand on his cock, and Mollymauk’s lips against his neck, he’d never truly considered that Mollymauk might want him the same way that he wanted Molly.

Somehow, he’d never considered that the whole time he’d been thinking of Mollymauk, clinging to memories of their shared dreams and watching for him in mirrors, Mollymauk may have been watching him, too.

“I’m- _Mollymauk_ - _”_ he gasped, and Molly replied immediately, his words faint and distant and the most beautiful thing that Caleb had ever heard.

“ _That’s it,”_ he said, “ _That’s it, you sound so good, Caleb, you sound beautiful-”_

“I- _ngh-_ I need you to- _”_

“ _To what_?”

“-don’t stop-”

In the mirror, Mollymauk’s eyes burned. “ _Never_ ,” he purred, the word a promise, and Caleb heard himself groan. “ _Let me look after you, Caleb_.”

“Mollymauk- _du_ \- _a-ahh_!”

Caleb cried out, his head dropping forwards as he sped up his strokes over his cock. There was no finesse to his actions now, was no grace, but he didn’t care, and he couldn’t imagine that Molly did, either. He just wanted to come, _needed_ to come, needed to chase his completion and reach it with Mollymauk’s help. He moaned again, low and needy, and felt the impression of Molly’s lips against his neck, icy cold against his flushed, heated skin.

“ _Gorgeous,”_ Molly murmured. His fingers tightened around Caleb’s cock as best they could, cold and slick and strange and wonderful, and Caleb cried out again. He was so close, was _so close_ , and he could feel Molly, and Molly’s hand, and Molly’s touch, and his cock throbbed and his skin was flushed and he _wanted_.

Molly shifted closer, a line of ice against Caleb’s side, and then he pressed another kiss to Caleb’s throat, and Caleb was gone.

Caleb squeezed his eyes shut, feeling his cock pulsing in Molly’s hand as the world turned white around him. Heat surged through his veins, making him cry out into the still, silent air of the house, but he barely heard himself over the thundering in his ears, over the pounding of his heart and the white-hot burning _pleasure_ that flooded his body, sinking heat and warmth everywhere that it touched. His hand slowed around his cock, now slick with his own spend, but he could still feel coolness between his fingers, could still feel a chill touch against his neck. He didn’t open his eyes, still catching his breath as, around him, the world slowly came back into focus. Gradually he felt his heart starting to slow, and after a few more seconds he slowly blinked his eyes open.

In the mirror, Mollymauk smiled at him, more delighted and flushed than Caleb had ever seen him look before.

 _“Beautiful_ ,” Mollymauk murmured again, heat and want and absolute joy dancing in his eyes, and then, between one breath and the next, he vanished.

For a moment, the only sound in the world was Caleb’s ragged, panting breaths. He didn’t say anything for a while, feeling barely able to think at all past the pleasure and endorphins now swimming through his brain, and when he finally managed to pull himself together enough to speak, there was only one thing that he could think to say.

“Mollymauk?” Caleb mumbled quietly. The room was silent around him, still and unmoving, and it unsettled him in a way that silence never had before he came to Tealeaf Hill. “…Mollymauk? _Bist-_ are you there?”

There was no response. Caleb sat up a little bit more, absently wiping his hand on his trousers, and looked into the mirror that rested atop the vanity. There was no Mollymauk, watching him from beyond the silvered glass. There was no hint of purple. There was no sign of any tiefling, alive or dead.

In the corner of the room, a single peacock feather stirred. It could have been a draft bringing it to dance in the vase in which it rested, but Caleb knew that it wasn’t. He knew what was Mollymauk, now. He knew what was Mollymauk’s doing.

He smiled.

“ _Hallo,”_ he murmured. At the back of his head, in the part of his brain that hadn’t been turned to pleasant mush by his orgasm, he vaguely remembered Caduceus saying something about effort, and energy, and how Molly’s spirit must have been tired after the séance. “Are you- are you there, _Liebling_?”

The feather dipped again.

“Oh, _gut_. I thought you were. That was- mm.”

 _What_?

“ _Gut_. Very- _ja_. Nice.”

The feather rustled briefly, as though in laughter, and Caleb smiled. He didn’t feel tense anymore. He didn’t feel stressed. He just felt relaxed and slightly sleepy, as though he were moments away from curling up then and there in Mollymauk’s old bedsheets and dozing off, losing himself once again to their shared dream-space. Maybe he would do that. Maybe Molly would be able to talk more there.

“Mollymauk?” he heard himself ask.

_Yes?_

Caleb didn’t even think before speaking again. “Thank you.”

The breeze sighed around him, brushing over his skin in a fond, familiar touch. Caleb shut his eyes and leant back, settling down against the blankets of Molly’s bed as, slowly, he felt himself returning to normal.

It was only a few minutes later, when his breath had entirely levelled out and he felt more aware of his own thoughts again, that the true realisation of what he had done struck him.

 _Oh_ , Caleb thought. _Oh, fuck_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy very-nearly-Halloween!  
> The art in this chapter was done by [fswrites](https://twitter.com/fswrites)!
> 
> The next chapter will be posted **November 6th!**


	13. Chapter 13

For the remainder of the day, the house was almost entirely silent.

Caleb cleaned himself up after several long, uncertain minutes spent lying in Mollymauk’s bed, thinking over what he had just done. He felt strange beneath his skin, as though two separate halves of himself were battling over how to feel. He couldn’t deny that he felt better now, his headache lessened by the burning pleasure of his orgasm and his entire body feeling wonderfully worn-out and relaxed as though every gathered tension that had been sitting in his shoulders and spine for the last few days had finally melted away, but he also couldn’t forget the true, core reason for why he had found those photos at all. He couldn’t forget that Mollymauk was dead, that Mollymauk was a _ghost_. As much as Mollymauk seemed to have wanted it, as pleasant as Caleb had found it, as wonderful as it had been to be touched by Mollymauk, and to touch himself to photographs of Mollymauk done up in pearls and silk and lace that Caleb longed to touch and to ruin, it was still only happening because Mollymauk was dead.

It was still only happening because, behind the house in a cemetery overgrown with protective brambles and clinging vines, a tiefling lay buried beneath the dirt.

But Mollymauk had _wanted this_. Caleb _knew_ that. He’d checked with Mollymauk, had received confirmation from him, and without Mollymauk’s help he likely would never have found the photographs at all. Mollymauk, he knew, wanted this just as much as Caleb did. He wanted to touch Caleb, wanted to make Caleb come, wanted to murmur terrible, filthy, wonderful things in Caleb’s ear and make Caleb groan and cry out beneath him. He’d wanted Caleb to do this, to sit on his bed in his bedroom and touch himself to thoughts of Mollymauk, and Caleb had.

And it had been wonderful.

Caleb groaned, scrubbing a hand across his face. He was in the bathroom now, splashing his face with cold water after washing away the mess that he’d made of himself. “ _Gods_ ,” he muttered, blinking away the droplets that clung to his lashes and staunchly ignoring how, at the back of his mind, some part of him longed to look over his shoulder in the mirror and hope to see the smiling face of a purple tiefling. “ _Verdammt,_ Widogast. This is not why you are here.”

His reflection stared back at him. He could still see hints of the flush that had coated his face but they were fading now, the red receding back until he almost looked as though nothing had happened at all. Beyond the stains that he’d done his best to scrub out of his trousers and the memory of the event there was next to no physical evidence to show that it had happened at all. Even if Mollymauk had been trying to leave marks – and _Gods_ , but Caleb felt his throat turn dry just at the thought of it – he wasn’t sure if ghosts could. It had taken enough out of Mollymauk just to appear in the mirror, to make his presence known and speak to Caleb and touch him enough to make him come. To do more than that, Caleb suspected, would be nearly impossible.

“Gods,” he muttered. He couldn’t be thinking about this. He _couldn’t_. Caleb shook his head again, reaching up to brush his hair back from his face. At some point during his… activities his hair had slipped free of the ribbon he tied it back with and was now hanging around his face, clinging to his skin where the cold water still stung. He wasn’t actually sure where his ribbon was, he realised. It was, presumably, on the bed somewhere, but he hadn’t noticed it when he’d first stood up on shaky legs some minutes after the event to make his unstable way to the bathroom. In all fairness, he hadn’t noticed much of anything, save for the occasional sigh of the breeze across his skin, and the stickiness drying on his thighs and hand. All he’d been thinking of as he left the room was Mollymauk, and Mollymauk’s touch, and Mollymauk’s smile, and exactly what his own feelings were for a dead man.

He still wasn’t sure what they were. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know. Caleb ran a hand over his face again, shutting his eyes and stepping back from the mirror. He couldn’t be thinking about this. He had other things to do, had more important things to do, had an actual _job_ to do.

He had photographs to clean up, he realised silently, and swore again. He didn’t feel ready to return to the bedroom, didn’t feel ready to face the remaining evidence of what he had done, but he had to. If he didn’t do it now, he would just have to do it later, and he felt that was even worse.

Caleb swore once more in a colourful outburst of Zemnian and then he sighed, opened his eyes, and returned to the bedroom. He very carefully didn’t look at the bed when he entered. The photo of Mollymauk was still where he had dropped it when he came, the rest of them scattered across the floor. Even though he was there to tidy them up, he still tried his best to avert his gaze, not wanting to become fixated as he had before. It was a fruitless endeavour, however. He couldn’t stop himself from glancing down at the floor as he entered the room, his gaze hungrily taking in whatever glimpses of Mollymauk he could see. He couldn’t see any of the photographs in full, but he saw enough hints of tattooed skin hidden beneath lace, or silk, or gauze, or nothing at all to make his mouth run dry.

Caleb snapped his gaze up, focusing it fixedly on the far side of the room. He couldn’t- he _wouldn’t_ look at any of the photos of Mollymauk. Not now. Not in any great detail. He would still tidy them, of course, and he couldn’t exactly do that with his eyes shut, but it didn’t feel right to look at them as closely as he had earlier, not when Mollymauk was still being so very, very quiet. He breathed in slowly, willing his heart to slow back down from its brief increase in tempo. Gods, what was wrong with him? He was a grown man, sufficiently accustomed to attraction and lust and libido to know how to handle it when it arose, and yet here he was, feeling like a teenager just from some sepia images of a dead man.

A dead man who had _wanted it,_ Caleb reminded himself. The words felt bitter in his mind, steeped in a quiet self-disgust. He hadn’t even believed in ghosts a few short weeks ago. He reached up, once again brushing his hair back from his face, and quickly glanced over the bed once more. He could see no sign of the ribbon that he’d lost, but, somehow, that was almost a relief. After all, he couldn’t start tidying up if his hair was going to get in his face the whole time. He’d have to find his ribbon first, or borrow one from Mollymauk just to keep his hair out of the way and, conveniently, give himself a few more moments to gather himself. He could leave the photographs for a moment longer. He could forget that event for just a few more short, fleeting minutes.

Resolutely not looking at the floor, Caleb skirted the bed and crossed to Mollymauk’s vanity. He’d inspected it some time ago now and he knew the box on it to hold all manner of jewellery and jewels as well as a cluster of ribbons curled up in the base of the box. He reached out, resting a hand on it, and was about to open the box when he paused.

“Mollymauk?” Caleb asked quietly. His words sounded lonely in the empty room, quiet and abandoned with no one to hear them. He swallowed, clearing his throat, and tried again. “Mollymauk? Are you there?”

There was a pause, and then the breeze sighed through the room. Caleb smiled.

“Mollymauk, would you mind if I were to borrow a ribbon?” he asked. The breeze sighed again, faint and weak as it skimmed over his knuckles, but it was all that Caleb needed to feel. He knew Mollymauk. He knew what this meant.

He opened the box with a quiet murmur of thanks, delicately removing the topmost layer and placing it to one side to reveal the coiled ribbons beneath before withdrawing one. It was a velvet ribbon, a rich, dark red in colour and altogether surprisingly plain, given the owner of the box. Beneath it Caleb could see multiple more ribbons in a riot of colour – some blue with a woven paisley print, some bright yellow with hints of gold, some made of a thick, beautiful lace in white or ivory or black – but this ribbon had none of that. It was just plain, or as plain a ribbon as Caleb could hope to find here.

It would do perfectly.

Caleb shut the lid of the box, the ribbon held firmly in one hand. “Thank you,” he called out into the empty room. He lifted his hand to his head, starting to tie his hair back, and, as he did so, he heard the peacock feathers start whispering in their vase.

_Of course_.

Caleb smiled, tying the ribbon off in a well-practised knot. It was no different to how he normally tied his hair back but it somehow still felt significant, as though Mollymauk were in some way leaving a mark on him for all that it had been Caleb’s decision to take a ribbon from the box. When he left the house now, he would carry a small indication of Mollymauk with him. It was entirely plausible that no one would notice but him, but he didn’t mind that. He liked it. This mark, this ribbon, would be between himself, and Mollymauk, and no one else at all.

With that thought in mind, Caleb turned back to survey the rest of the room. The photographs still lay scattered across the floor like autumn leaves, and as he turned a few of them whispered as they shifted slightly across the floorboards. Each one that moved revealed yet more of the image beneath it, and once again Caleb found his gaze being drawn to the graceful lines and curves of Mollymauk’s figure, to the darkness of his lips and the knowing half-smirk that lingered about his mouth. Almost without realising he dropped to his knees, reaching out for a photo and picking it up to inspect the single, beautiful, frozen moment of Mollymauk’s life. Mollymauk was beautiful. He was beautiful, and handsome, and Caleb couldn’t get enough of the sound of his voice or the touch of his hands, however cold they may be, and he-

He needed to stop thinking like that. He needed to stop letting himself be drawn so strongly to Mollymauk Tealeaf, the tiefling who was buried in the cemetery at the back of the house. He needed to focus himself, and focus on his work, and be calm and rational and reasonable and _not_ slowly but surely developing feelings for a- for a _ghost_. He couldn’t do that. He _shouldn’t_.

Caleb took a deep breath, and then he turned the photograph over and stood up.

He tidied up the photographs of Mollymauk as quickly as he could, stacking them into a neat pile that he then placed back in the box he found them in. He’d originally planned to place the top-most photograph image-down, so as not to distract himself with it too much, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t look away from Mollymauk. In this photo, the one that Caleb had just so happened to pick up and place on top of the stack, he seemed to be caught mid-laugh, his features and body slightly blurred as his mouth curved up in a wide, joyous smile. He was somehow more _and_ less dressed in this one than he had been in the photograph that Caleb had so strongly reacted to, clad in nothing more than string and strings of pearls, every last one shining in the sunlight. He seemed to be toying with them, one hand playing absently with a strand that hung from his shoulders. That photo held Caleb’s attention for a while, up until the sound of Frumpkin meowing outside the bedroom door made him jump and nearly drop the stack again. He put the photos back in the box, and was just about to place the box back under the bed when he paused.

Mollymauk had wanted this, he reminded himself. Mollymauk had wanted for him to find these photographs, had wanted for him to look at them, had wanted for him to find his release to images of Molly all dressed up in silk and lace. Mollymauk had gone to all the trouble of leading Caleb directly to them. It would be rude to put them away after all that had happened. It would be ignoring all of Molly’s hard work and artistry.

It would make them harder to locate in the evenings, when Caleb was alone with his thoughts.

Trying not to think too hard about what he was doing, Caleb placed the box down on the bedside table and then, without looking back, turned on his heel and left the room. He walked downstairs and back to the dining room at a calm, measured pace, reminding himself of his job. He had work to do. He should do it.

Caleb sat down at the table, drew a random piece of paper towards himself, and started to read.

\---

For the whole rest of the day, Caleb kept catching himself looking for any sign of Mollymauk. He would lose himself to his work for minutes on end, diving back into the paperwork with a vigour that he’d thought he’d lost, but after only a handful of minutes spent reading the documents he would unerringly find himself looking up, watching the flicker of the candle flames and hoping to see some glimpse of purple in the mirror opposite him. On occasion, he would spot some indication of Mollymauk’s presence, would recognise the spirit in the touch of the breeze or the soft shifting of the curtains, but, mostly, Mollymauk was entirely silent, as absent from the house as if Caleb’s initial disbelief in ghosts had been correct all along.

At first, it was almost concerning. Mollymauk’s presence had become a strange source of comfort to Caleb in the vast, creaking, ancient house, where all other life seemed entirely absent and the shadows seemed to shift like oil in the night, but Caleb tried to remind himself of Caduceus’ words about energy and effort. Mirrors, he was quite certain, did not require as much energy to appear in as the rest of the waking world did, but Molly had done more than just appear. He’d done more than just watch Caleb, the way that he usually did from mirrors. He’d been present. He’d been active. He’d lead Caleb upstairs, and had shown him the box, and encouraged him to inspect the photos, and to touch himself, and then he’d manifested within the house to a degree that Caleb had never encountered before. He’d still only been touching Caleb as the wind, had still been little more than a cold caress against his skin, but even now Caleb felt himself shiver when he thought about how it had felt to hear Mollymauk’s words purred low and heated against his ear, how it had felt to look into the mirror and see Mollymauk’s hand wrapped around his cock, lavender-purple and as cold as ice and _perfect_.

Even now, Caleb longed to feel that touch again. He knew that he shouldn’t, knew that his feelings for Mollymauk were already starting to descend into an altogether dangerous sort of territory given the situation at hand, but he couldn’t help it. Despite himself, despite what he used to believe, despite _everything_ , he found that he liked Mollymauk. He liked Mollymauk a lot. He liked Mollymauk, and he liked the smile that Mollymauk always seemed to wear in their dreams, and he liked Mollymauk’s voice, and his words, and how he communicated with Caleb as best he could from his place between the veils of life and death. He liked Mollymauk in death, and he had no doubt that he would have adored him in life, and the mere thought of encountering Mollymauk as he lived made him feel shivery all over.

Caleb didn’t get much work done for the rest of the day. By the time night drew its shroud around the house he’d done barely anything at all, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to care as much as he knew that he should. He’d needed a break. He’d _known_ that he’d needed a break, and yet it was only with Mollymauk’s assistance that he’d allowed himself to relax even for a moment. This single day of peace, of quiet… that could be permitted. That would be alright.

Taking a break, allowing himself to relax, allowing himself to feel _good_ … perhaps, he thought, that didn’t have to happen just once.

Before he slept that night, Caleb opened the box he had left on his bedside table, drawing out the topmost photograph. Mollymauk’s presence was still faint but he could feel it all the same when Molly caressed along the length of his arm, brushing over his knuckles as though encouraging him. Somehow, in the darkness of the night, the photograph illuminated only by the moonlight and the flickering dance of the candle, it felt easier to permit himself what he wanted. It felt easier to give in to Molly’s touch, and to slip his hand beneath the covers, and, if just for a moment, allow himself to give in.

When Caleb fell asleep some time later, he fell asleep sated.

He dreamed that night, too, but they were fleeting, regular dreams, as immaterial as smoke, with each one containing some conjured glimpse of purple. He awoke late the following morning feeling more rested than he had in days, with no fading warmth between his legs or half-formed memories of Mollymauk joining him in their shared-between space. He just felt calm, comfortable as though both his body and mind had finally had the rest that they so desperately needed.

Outside the bedroom windows, the sun shone brighter than it had in a while. For a moment Caleb was confused, seeing how he normally woke to the darkness or dim grey light of winter, but then he realised that, somehow, he’d slept far past when he would normally wake. He supposed that explained why Frumpkin was no longer lying curled at his feet, and a quick glance to one side confirmed that the bedroom door, which he’d gotten into the habit of leaving shut, but not latched, was slightly ajar. He rose slowly with a leisurely stretch and dressed unhurriedly before leaving the bedroom. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he didn’t feel quite as stressed as he had before. He felt calmer, more relaxed for all that the mystery of Mollymauk’s death intrigued him more than it ever had before.

It was only when Caleb walked onto the landing to see sunlight streaming through the windows of the entrance hall that he realised that Caduceus must already have come and gone. The sunlight and time of day was one indication – by now Caleb was rather familiar with how much time the groundskeeper tended to spend at the house on different days – but the more apparent sign was the flat shape of a letter that rested just inside the front door of the house. Caleb could see it from where he stood at the top of the stairs, the soft cream of it standing clear and apparent against the black and white of the tiles. It hadn’t been there when he went to bed that night, and he knew that normally Caduceus would simply pass him the letter when they greeted each other in the morning. Not today, though. Today, Caduceus had presumably come by the house and found no one at the door, deciding to instead post the letter through the letterbox.

Caleb descended the stairs, crossing the hall on careful, cautious feed before stopping down to pick the letter up. The folded sheet of paper – for that was all it was, with no envelope to speak of – seemed to be of a cheaper make than those he tended to find at the manor, already crumpled just from the hand of whoever had written it, and it practically reeked of roses and sugar. Caleb wrinkled his nose as he picked it up, fighting the urge to cough, and turned it over. The other side of it merely read ‘ _To Mr Caleb Widogast’_ in a familiar curling, looping script that was almost as flowery as the perfume that the letter was drenched in.

Caleb smiled, and opened the letter.

_Hi Caleb!_

_Oh my god okay I’m really sorry if my handwriting isn’t super good right now but this is a super important letter because I need you to come to my house today okay??? As soon as you can. This is SUPER important, like SUPER DUPER important, and that’s why I gave the letter to Caduceus so that he could bring it up to you so I really hope you haven’t died and turned into a ghost or whatever since I last saw you, because I really really need you to come to my house and also if you do come (and you’d better!) then could you please bring, like, something of Molly’s? Not his cards though, something that’s, like, definitely his but wasn’t super important to him? It’s really important! Beau will be there too, by the way._

_Yours,_

_Jester (hugs)_

That felt… concerning. Caleb frowned at the letter, quickly reading it again. He hadn’t missed anything in Jester’s letter, and the absence of any true details but him a bit on edge. It was unclear what Jester wanted from him, or what he wanted him to do, and Caleb had never liked unknowns. But he trusted Jester and, somehow, he trusted Beauregard too. They all wanted the same thing out of this, all wanted to solve the same mystery and murder, and after all that Jester had done for him in terms of setting up the séance, convincing Beauregard to come along, and then actually running it with no mention of cost or of payment, Caleb felt like he owed her something.

Except that this wasn’t a debt being repaid. He knew that. Jester had done everything of her own free will, and Caleb felt certain that she was just as invested in Mollymauk’s death as he was. For whatever reason, she needed to see him, and after all the help she’d provided, Caleb was hardly going to say no.

The only problem, therefore, was in reaching her.

Caleb knew Caduceus’ pattern by now; unless he specifically asked Caduceus to return to the house at some later point in the day to give him a lift into town, the groundskeeper only ever visited when he had reason to, and he wasn’t due to visit again until the following morning. Caleb had no way to get a letter to him, either, not isolated on the hilltop as he was. There was no line of communication from here to the groundskeeper’s house. There was no line of communication from here to anywhere.

The only way down to the village was the road that Caduceus’ cart took.

The only way down to the village was the lane where the mist hung as thick as mid-winter snow.

Just for a moment, Caleb shut his eyes. He knew what he had to do, knew it as certainly as he knew anything else, and he hated it.

“ _Scheiße_ ,” he muttered to himself. He turned in place, feeling the paper of the letter crunch and crinkle beneath his fingers as he started to cross the hall, retracing his steps back upstairs. “ _Scheiße, scheiße._ Alright. Okay. This is- this is fine. This will be fine.” He reached out, pushing open the bedroom door, and dropped the letter on the bed before crossing to the wardrobe. _Bring something of Molly’s_ the letter had said and Caleb was going to do just that, and if the process of doing that distracted his mind from how, exactly, he was going to get the item to Jester, then so much the better. It didn’t take him long to decide what to bring, either. He couldn’t easily bring anything particularly large and bulky, and bringing Mollymauk’s embroidered waistcoat just felt wrong, somehow, even if it _was_ in the wardrobe and not buried with him. Caleb had never thought to check after the séance, and he didn’t particularly feel like checking now. It felt too invasive, too impolite, to go looking for the waistcoat that Mollymauk so consistently appeared to him in. The waistcoat wouldn’t do. It would have to be something else.

Caleb remembered the brisk chill of the winter air outside, and felt his gaze drift to the side of the wardrobe where he’d noticed some winter items hanging before.

He didn’t even ask as he reached for the scarf hanging inside the wardrobe. He could already feel Mollymauk’s presence against his side, reassuring and familiar, and knew that if he took something that Molly didn’t want him to take, Molly would let him know. As it was, though, Mollymauk seemed to have no objections as Caleb withdrew the soft, rich blue fabric, the pattern of silver moons on it shining in the sunlight. He had no objections as Caleb dressed himself, donning his coat and winding Mollymauk’s scarf tightly around his neck. Caleb remembered how the mist had felt before, remembered how it had slipped beneath his clothes and wrapped around his neck like a noose. He didn’t want to feel that again. He didn’t want to feel the mist again, not if he could help it, and after a moments thought he located his gloves and tugged them on, too. He had good cause to, even if the mist wasn’t what it was. The frost of the morning had already been mostly burned away by the feeble sun but he could still see it clinging to the shadows around the house, sparkling like crushed diamonds and speaking of greater cold still to come. It wouldn’t do to go all the way out there, to brave the mist once again, only to emerge from it shivering from something that wasn’t even supernatural. It was perfectly sensible reasoning.

Caleb snorted, starting to make his way out of the house. As if anything about this was perfectly sensible. As if anything about this made sense. He had somehow left behind the rational world that he had dwelled in for so long, where dead people stayed dead and all he had to do was deal with grieving friends and family while locating and carrying out a will. The worst he normally had to contend with was disgruntled relatives arguing with each other or with him about what they had been left. There was no weirdness there. There was no strangeness. There was certainly nothing supernatural.

But even odder than the whole situation, Caleb felt, was his own reaction to it, how his fear and confusion and doubt had given way to what he felt now. He came to a stop before the half-open gates of Tealeaf Hill, feeling the gravel crunching beneath his shoes. He didn’t feel afraid of Mollymauk. He didn’t feel afraid of the house. He still had his doubts, still had his confusion and his uncertainty, but he battled it less and less with every passing day. He just accepted it, now. He just accepted the strange, unreal thing that his life had become.

He just accepted what he had to do for Mollymauk.

Caleb drew in a breath, feeling the air piercing his lungs like icicles, and stared through the bars of the gate.

Before him the mist lay in heavy, shifting coils, patient and waiting and as silent as the grave. It seemed almost as though it was slumbering, moving in slow, steady patterns as though the whole hill were breathing through it. Perhaps it was. At this point, practically anything seemed possible.

Even walking through the mist.

“Mollymauk,” Caleb called out into the silence. His words faded almost as soon as he said them, taken and consumed by the mist that waited, hungrily, just beyond the gates. His voice wasn’t loud but it didn’t have to be – here, in the stillness and silence, any noise sounded as loud as the ringing of a bell. It was loud enough for him to hear it. That was all that mattered.

Past the iron ribs of the gate, the mist stirred and shifted but gave no real reaction to his voice. Caleb swallowed, wetting his dry throat. “Mollymauk,” he said again, his voice a little softer. He could see the mist shifting, could see how it sleepily reached out towards him in places, sending soft tendrils of vapour stretching across the gravel and towards his ankles. “Mollymauk, I- it’s me. Caleb Widogast. I am- I need to pass. This is important.” Why it was important he still didn’t know, but he didn’t feel any need to say that. He trusted Jester, despite only having met her a handful of times. He trusted Beauregard, too. They’d all met Mollymauk. They’d all spoken to him together. If Jester said that it was important that he see her, then he would take her at her word. And if the only way that he could do that was to cross through the mist himself, then he would do that.

“Mollymauk,” Caleb said once more. The name felt familiar on his tongue, as though he’d been saying it for years. “Please. I need to pass. I need you to let me through.”

There was silence.

The mist shifted and then with an impossible, inaudible sigh, split before him. It didn’t lead into a clear path, still swirling above the road, but somehow Caleb could see where the mist had bowed in before him, leaving an indentation as though encouraging him to walk into it. It wasn’t particularly wide or particularly deep but it was enough to be seen. It was enough to be recognised.

“Mollymauk?” Caleb asked again, and the mist shifted once more. “I am – know that I am trusting you with this.”

Again, that same shifting of the mist. Again, that same, impossible sigh. _It’s alright_ , Caleb felt something imply. He didn’t know what. He hoped that it was Mollymauk. _It’s alright_.

His heart in his throat, Caleb stepped into the mist.

Around him, the entire world fell silent. It was an expected silence, but that didn’t make it any better. Caleb strained his ears as he walked, holding his breath so as not to introduce any further conflicting noises, but even then he could only just make out the sound of his own footsteps tapping out against the mist-slick cobbles. He couldn’t hear the wind in the trees, or the sound of creatures stirring in the undergrowth, or the creaking groans of the house complaining as the frost bit into its bones. He couldn’t hear _anything_ past the suffocating silence of the mist and the way it filled his ears and his eyes and every single one of his senses. He couldn’t hear anything, and he couldn’t smell anything, and he couldn’t see anything past the thick, clinging mist and couldn’t feel anything through the leather of his gloves.

Except.

Caleb paused. Against the back of his hand he felt something touch, so faintly that he barely felt it at all. He felt no pressure, felt no indication of something pressing down against him, but just for a moment, he could swear that the back of his glove grew just a little colder, as though ice had been run along it to sink cold into his skin.

Caleb reached down and, without looking, took off his gloves.

Almost immediately, he felt something sigh against the back of his hand.

It was a strange, half-familiar touch. He’d felt it before, had already experienced the sensation of the mist tracing over his skin and winding around his body like a thousand reaching, immaterial hands, but that wasn’t why it was familiar to him. It still felt the same way the mist had before, still held the dampness and the coldness and the unpleasant, lingering chill that pressed ice into his veins, but there was something else to it, now. Something new.

No, not new. He’d felt this before.

Caleb turned his hand, moving it gently through the mist that surrounded him on all sides. The mist parted around his hand, twisting and shifting into soft, delicate spirals that vanished as soon as they appeared, but he could still feel it twisting through his fingers and grabbing onto the cuff of his coat. He could feel it pressing against his skin, and clinging to his legs, and he could feel it against his neck, now, pressing cold against his pulse point in a regular, steady pattern.

Caleb smiled.

“Mollymauk,” he said softly, and watched as his breath made the mist immediately before him flutter and shift. He returned his hand to his side, feeling the mist catching at his fingers, and half-curled his fingers as though he were holding onto something invisible and unreal. “Mollymauk, I know that you are there.”

The mist sighed against his neck again, right up under his chin where the scarf didn’t cover his skin, but Caleb only smiled further. He was still a little on edge, was still uncomfortable with how the mist disoriented him and turned him around and swallowed up his words and his voice as though it were hungry for them, but he didn’t feel afraid. He didn’t feel scared. This mist was part of the hill, was part of the house, was part of _Molly_. Caleb wasn’t afraid of Mollymauk. Not anymore. He couldn’t be. Mollymauk, he knew, had never meant to harm him. Mollymauk had only wanted him to be frightened enough to leave, but at the same time was too concerned of something outside of his control – whoever it was who killed him, Caleb suspected – for him to let people pass through the mist with which he guarded himself and his home. Caleb rather suspected that Mollymauk hadn’t really thought things through during his first few nights at the house. Had he hoped that, by scaring Caleb away from the door with shifting, grabbing shadows, Caleb would ask Caduceus to take him down the hill the following morning? Was Caleb still too much of an unknown entity, then, for Mollymauk to let him pass through the mist?

Had Mollymauk thought that he was someone else entirely?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Caleb had no good way of knowing, but Mollymauk knew who he was, now, and that was what mattered. Mollymauk had seen him, had spoken to him, had made a space for himself within Caleb’s dreams as surely as Caleb had made a space for himself within Mollymauk’s home. As long as Molly could see him, as long as Molly could recognise who he was, Caleb knew that he was safe.

And, he realised, there was one way that he could ensure that Mollymauk would recognise him.

“Mollymauk?” he asked quietly, and felt the mist skim over his knuckles. “Are you- Caduceus has told me some things, you know. About you, and ghosts, and spirits, and how about how apparently it can sometimes be difficult for you to tell people apart. Now, I do not know if he is correct, of course, and neither does he, but… well, if it turns out that he is, and that at times you struggle to identify myself or other visitors, I thought that I might, perhaps, be able to help with that.”

The mist brushed over his skin again, leaving goosebumps in its wake. Caleb shivered.

“I was thinking,” he continued, “that I may be able to show you something by which you will always be able to recognise me, even if you cannot see me. That is- that is my hope, at least.”

Again, the mist over his knuckles. _What is it?_

Caleb smiled. _“Hallo, Mollymauk_ ,” he said, and watched as, all around him, the mist grew still. “ _Alles gut – ich bin es nur, Caleb. Ich dachte mir, dass nicht viele Leute auf Zemnian zu dir sprechen, hm? Ich weiß, du kennst meine Stimme, aber Caduceus sagt, dass manchmal Dinge verzerrt sein können, und für dich unklar sind. Ich hoffe, das klärt es für dich. Wenn du Zemnian hörst, weißt du jetzt, dass ich es bin der mit dir spricht. Jetzt, bitte, lass mich durch den Nebel.”_

The syllable faded away within moments, consumed by the mist that waited around him. Caleb knew that Mollymauk almost certainly hadn’t understood what he was saying, but that was the point. He was hoping that no one else in Mollymauk’s life had spoken Zemnian to him, or that, if they had, they hadn’t done it with much regularity. He just needed for Mollymauk to associate Zemnian with him. He just needed for Molly to be able to hear his voice, even if he did not understand the words.

_Hello, Mollymauk. It's alright, it's just me. It's just Caleb. I suspect you have not had many people speak to you in Zemnian, hmm? I know you know my voice, but Caduceus said that sometimes things can be distorted and unclear for you. I hope that this clears it up. If you hear Zemnian, you can know that it is me talking. Now, please, let me through the mist._

All around him, the mist remained perfectly silent. There was no movement to it, was no indication that Mollymauk or anyone else had heard Caleb’s words in the slightest, and the silence unnerved him.

“ _Ja?”_ Caleb asked quietly. “ _Alles gut, Mollymauk_.” His voice vanished instantly, just as every other word had, and he shivered a little, suddenly feeling somewhat uncertain. He was so sure that Mollymauk was able to see and recognise him here, but what if he couldn’t? What if he had been wrong all along? What if Mollymauk already associated Zemnian with someone other than Caleb, someone who he hated or feared or would in some way react badly do? What if Caleb had just taken whatever strange relationship he had been building with Mollymauk and thrown it asunder? What if-

From out of the thick, impenetrable mist, there came a sound. It was faint, as distant as the stars, but Caleb heard it. He recognised it. He felt that he would have recognised it anywhere.

_Caleb_ , said Mollymauk’s voice. _Caleb. I hear you_.

Immediately, Caleb felt himself relax. “ _Alles gut_ ,” he murmured again, though whether he was saying it to himself or to Mollymauk he was no longer sure. Molly had heard him. Molly had understood.

Molly was here, was present with Caleb on this strange, impossible, mist-hung road, and Caleb trusted him with everything that he had.

Caleb shut his eyes, feeling the icy chill of the mist settling in his lungs as he inhaled, and then, with his eyes still shut, he started to walk forwards.

Beneath his feet, he felt only the cobbles of the road. They were slick with damp, just as he had expected them to be, but he walked slowly and cautiously and took care not to slip on the stones. Around him, he felt only the mist pressing against his skin and the void of space – there were no branches scratching at his skin, no trunks or old bits of fence nudging against his legs and tripping him up, and he could only assume that he was still walking a safe, clear line. Perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps, he thought, feeling the mist cling close to his skin as though trying to cocoon him, the direction that he walked didn’t matter. He couldn’t see the side of the road even with his eyes open. He couldn’t see anything. And, as he knew from the last time that he walked this route, it only took the briefest moment of inattention to be entirely disoriented.

Now, though, he wondered how much of it was inattention, and how much of it was the mist itself. How much power did Mollymauk have over this strange, liminal space, where there was no ground and no sky and no indication of direction, even for someone such as Caleb, with his uncanny ability of locating north. How much could Mollymauk manipulate the road that lived beneath the mist? How much of this between-space was Mollymauk’s?

For that, surely, was what it was. There was no doubt in Caleb’s mind as he continued to walk, putting one foot in front of the other and breathing as calmly and as levelly as he could. This was a between-space. It had to be.

Right now, Caleb was in Mollymauk’s domain, and he was trusting him completely.

Caleb couldn’t say for how long he walked like that, with his eyes shut and immaterial fingers woven between his own. He couldn’t say for how long he continued to walk on what felt like a level surface, neither climbing nor descending anything that felt even remotely like a hill. He just walked, placing one foot in front of another as, all around him, there was nothing to listen to but silence and the quiet, muffled sound of his own breathing.

And then, quite abruptly, Caleb heard something.

Or… no, not quite. He didn’t hear _something_. He knew what he was hearing. He could hear birdsong, and the sigh of the wind, and the whisper and rustle of leafless branches close at hand. He could hear his footsteps again, truly and properly, and the ground beneath his feet felt less sloped now, as though he were no longer ascending or descending a hill. He could no longer feel the chill of the mist against his face or skin, could no longer feel Mollymauk’s fingers intertwined with his own. He couldn’t feel Mollymauk at all.

Caleb opened his eyes.

Before him was the road, leading away from the base of the hill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! The next chapter will be posted on **November 11th**!
> 
> Also, a note on chapter uploads: I'm going to start trying to update this fic **weekly on a Monday**. However, because of life and general business that may not always be possible. I will continue to let you know when the next chapter is due to go up in the end of chapter notes, so if in doubt please check those!


	14. Chapter 14

Even at the bottom of the hill, Caleb could still feel the mist that rested at his back. It curled around his ankles, caressing where shadows had once tried to grab and touch as if trying to draw him back into its impossible, obscuring embrace, and slipped beneath the cuffs of his coat to lie cold against his wrist. He couldn’t feel it around his neck, not with Mollymauk’s scarf in the way, but he knew that it was pressing there, too. If he pushed his mind he thought, if only for a few moments, that he could feel the soft fabric pressing just a little closer, as though some barely-there external pressure were being applied to it. He didn’t do that for very long, though. There was no point to it. That touch, the touch that he couldn’t feel… it wasn’t important. It wasn’t a touch that mattered.

Caleb flexed his hand. Between his fingers, he could still feel the faint pressure of Mollymauk Tealeaf holding his hand.

“Thank you,” Caleb breathed. The mist did not steal his words away from him this time, but his voice got lost amongst the trees all the same, carried by the soft breeze into their murmuring branches. Caleb flexed his hand again, twisting his fingers around nothingness. Mollymauk’s touch was faint, just as it always was, but it was even fainter here, beyond the boundary of his home and his realm. Here, Caleb could barely feel it at all. He could barely feel Mollymauk at all, could barely sense his presence in the area around him. There were no peacock feathers here to indicate Mollymauk’s approval. There were no curtains for him to move, no candleflames for him to make flicker, no windows for him to rattle. There were just the trees, whispering to themselves as the odd bird sang out a quiet, lonely melody against the overcast sky. Even if Molly was able to affect those, Caleb wasn’t sure if he would notice. The trees at the bottom of the hill spoke just as much as the trees at the top. Mollymauk’s words, if he were to say them, would get swallowed up by the murmur of branches.

This wasn’t Mollymauk’s home, and despite the life that now surrounded him, Caleb felt more alone and isolated than ever. He shivered, lifting a hand and tugging Mollymauk’s scarf closer around his neck. He could smell the lavender-opium-incense scent of it, the fragrance faded but still present enough to be noticeable, and it soothed him somewhat. Just for a moment, the breeze shifted, and something cold brushed against Caleb’s cheek. It felt like a kiss.

Caleb smiled. “I will be back later, alright?” he asked, his words just a little bit muffled by the scarf, and between his fingers he felt a touch as cold as ice. “I will not- I do not know how long I will be, but I will be back later, and when I come back, I will need you to let me through the mist again. _Ja_?”

Again, that cold touch against his cheek. Again, that cold touch against his palm. _Yes_.

“I will let you know that it is me, okay?”

The same touch, fainter this time. _Yes_.

“Thank you, Mollymauk.”

For a moment there was nothing at all, and then Caleb felt something press chill and icy against his lips. He knew what it was. He knew _who_ it was.

He smiled a little wider, and some part of him that had been growing gradually louder over the last few days wished that he could kiss Mollymauk back.

“Thank you,” he said once again, his words quieter this time. He felt the mist winding around his ankles, light and gentle, and for a moment was tempted to step back into its chilly embrace, into the lane where he knew Mollymauk dwelled. He didn’t want to leave the house, he found. Not now. Not after everything that had happened.

But he had to. He needed to see Jester, needed to find out what she needed help with. He needed to speak to Beau, too, to discuss his findings and see what insight she might provide. He needed to find out what had happened to Mollymauk and _why_ , and he needed to execute the will, which he still needed to locate. There was still so much that needed to be done, and he couldn’t do it from within the heart of the house. Caleb took another step forward, feeling the cobbles of the road up Tealeaf Hill giving way to the frozen mud of the path back to the village. The mist shifted and sighed behind him, sounding almost mournful in its impossible, unreal language, and a moment later the familiar touch faded from between Caleb’s fingers, leaving him all alone at the bottom of Tealeaf Hill.

Beneath the oppressive winter sky, Caleb shivered, looking out at the road that he had to take. There was no way that he was going to go Caduceus to ask for a lift to the village. He’d been there enough times now to know the length of the journey, and the horse that pulled Caduceus’ cart was barely faster than Caleb was himself when he put his mind to it. With the time that it would take for Caduceus to get his horse into her harness and hitch her to the cart, it would be quicker for Caleb to just walk to the village himself.

It wasn’t just that, though.

He needed this space, he felt. He needed this silence. Caduceus was a quiet individual, not prone to talking unless Caleb himself asked a question, but even the mere thought of another living person being around him almost felt like too much. There were still too many thoughts and questions and feelings in his head, twisting and swirling together like ink through water. He needed to be alone. He needed to think over what he was doing. He needed to think about Mollymauk. He needed to think about what he wanted to do.

Caleb drew in a breath, feeling the icy air piercing his lungs, and set off towards Alfield, leaving the house on Tealeaf Hill to fade into the distance behind him. The ground crunched beneath his feet as he walked, the frozen mud crumbling beneath his boots where it had been churned up by the passage of cart wheels, but the sound of it was half lost amongst the other small sounds that drifted around Caleb on the cool winter air, caught up in the twist of birdsong and the rustle of small creatures scurrying through the hedgerows. They were not sounds that existed at the top of the hill. There was no life up there. In all the time he had been there, he hadn’t seen a single insect, hadn’t encountered a single mouse. And yes, that could be due to Frumpkin’s presence, but Caleb doubted that, now. There was no other life in Tealeaf Manor. There was only himself, and his cat, and the ghost of Mollymauk.

In his pocket, Caleb flexed one of his hands. He could still feel the last lingering traces of a cold touch wrapped around his knuckles, a welcome and invisible brand against his skin. Everything about Mollymauk was welcome to him, now – his touch was welcome, and his words were welcome, and any indication of his presence at all was welcome to Caleb. There was no fear associated with him, not anymore. It seemed almost silly, to be looking back on his first days at the house and remembering how afraid he had been of the spirit who dwelled there, of the spirit who played with his cat when Caleb was too deeply engrossed in his work to be entertaining, or who shifted the breeze across Caleb’s knuckles to get his attention, or who came to Caleb in the soft, dark privacy of his dream-space and touched him and held him and spoke to him in that impossible, beautiful voice of his. There was no fear there.

So what was there instead?

Caleb swallowed, breathing in, and the action pulled another fresh wave of Mollymauk’s scent into his lungs. He wasn’t afraid of Mollymauk. He wasn’t even unsettled by him anymore, save for when Molly saw fit to rattle the windows or make some other loud noise to get Caleb’s attention if his usual methods hadn’t worked. He was unsettled by the circumstances surrounding his death, and he was unsettled by the absolute, silent absence of Lucien Tealeaf, and he was unsettled by locked rooms, and old paintings, and smalls things that he heard or noticed, but he wasn’t unsettled by Mollymauk. He _couldn’t_ be unsettled by Mollymauk. He felt that he knew him for all that the vast majority of their spoken communication took place in dreams, where everything was a bit strange and a bit fuzzy, as though it had been painted across cotton wool. He knew Mollymauk, and Mollymauk’s smile, and he knew how Molly liked to tease and joke as though trying to hide the true, caring heart of his nature. He knew the look that Mollymauk got when he was watching Caleb work, all still and quiet and softly sad. He _knew_ Mollymauk. He liked Mollymauk.

He was fond of Mollymauk, in a way that he hadn’t been fond of anyone for a long, long time. Though, perhaps calling it ‘fondness’ was too small. Perhaps it was more than that.

Caleb smiled to himself. It was a small smile, sharp and harsh and wry, without a single trace of humour to temper it. There was no ‘perhaps’ here. He’d had more than enough time, between the paperwork, and the reading, and long, silent hours spent at the house, to turn his own feelings over in his head. He knew what he felt. He knew what was happening. He just wasn’t sure if he liked it or not.

Because, as surely as the winter frost was falling to cover Tealeaf Hill, Caleb was falling for Mollymauk.

It wasn’t a long walk to Alfield, but all the same Caleb felt that he crossed the distance to Jester’s house unexpectedly quickly. Almost before he knew it he was walking up the street to her shop, coming to a stop outside her front door to rap quickly upon the wood. When she opened the door, barely a second after his knuckles had hit the wood, Caleb’s thoughts were still entirely focused on Mollymauk, and he had to shake himself quickly to focus on the event at hand.

“Did you bring it?” Jester asked immediately upon opening the door, making Caleb jump a little at her sudden and immediate arrival. “Did you- did you bring something of Molly’s?”

Caleb nodded, not resisting as Jester reached out for his arm and tugged him inside, shutting the door behind him. “I- _ja_ , yes, I did,” he replied with a frown, starting to follow Jester through the shop. “Are you- will you tell me what this is about?”

“No point!” Jester replied, walking briskly towards the stairs. “You’ll find out what it is super soon anyway, okay, it’ll just waste time if I tell you _now_.”

“But we are-”

“Come on, upstairs! Beau’s already here, by the way, just so you know, because I _think_ this ghost is related to her or something-”

“What _ghost_?”

“ _This_ ghost, Caleb! Keep _up_!” With a huffed sigh Jester pushed open the door at the top of the stairs, stepping inside her flat. Caleb followed after her, still frowning to himself. He was certain that Jester hadn’t mentioned a ghost in her letter, or a spirit, or a spectre, or anything supernatural at all, but it was too late for him to discuss that with her now. He followed her inside, and a somewhat familiar set-up met his eyes as he stepped into her flat, letting the door swing shut behind him. The table was set up just as he remembered it, ready for a séance all draped in fabric and adorned with candles, but the room around it looked surprisingly bland. There were none of the silks and colourful hangings that had been present for Mollymauk’s séance. In fact, Caleb realised as he stepped further into the flat, it looked almost like the séance had been put together in a hurry. Jester’s set-up, novice though it had presumably been, had nonetheless been done carefully. It had been clear even then that Jester had put great time and thought into making the space welcoming for Mollymauk, lighting incense and decorating it as his bedroom would have been and generally making it feel familiar to him. Even then, Caleb had been able to tell just from stepping into the room exactly who the séance was for.

Not today.

Today, the walls were almost bare. Whether that was deliberate or whether Jester simply didn’t have the ability to make the space welcoming for whoever it was she was going to try to communicate with Caleb didn’t know, but either option made him feel uncomfortable. This was blatantly a séance. There was nothing else that it _could_ be. But it wasn’t a séance for Mollymauk. It wasn’t a séance for the only spirit that Caleb had encountered. It wasn’t a séance for the only spirit that Caleb trusted.

“Who-” he started to say, but he barely finished the word before Jester interrupted him, striding over to the table where Beauregard was already sitting.

“Beau!” she called. “Caleb’s here!”

“Yeah, I know,” Beau replied, rolling her eyes. “I heard you when you let him in.” She glanced up, giving Caleb a short nod of greeting. “Hey, Caleb.”

“ _Hallo_ , Beauregard.”

“Did you bring-”

“ _Ja,_ yes, I brought something of Molly- of Mollymauk’s,” Caleb replied, reaching up to start unwinding the scarf from around his neck, loathe as he was to part from it. For a moment it seemed that Beau didn’t recognise it, her expression not changing in the slightest, but then Caleb shifted, making the silver moons catch in the sunlight, and her eyes abruptly widened.

Beau swallowed. “Is that- is that Molly’s-”

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb said, finishing unwinding the scarf. For a moment, Beau just continued to stare at him. Her eyes were narrowed, suspicion clear on her face, and something in the sharpness of her gaze made Caleb feel as though he were pinned down in place, held captive beneath the magnifying glass of her scrutiny. He’d _known_ that she was going to recognise Molly’s scarf, had known that she would recognise the possession of her dead best friend, and yet he’d taken it anyway. He’d worn it anyway, and with every second that passed he felt himself growing more and more uncomfortable.

And then, with a shrug, Beau looked away. “Alright,” she muttered, jerking her head towards the table. “Stick it with everything else.”

Caleb frowned. “You don’t- you do not mind?”

“Caleb, at this point I don’t give a fuck what you wear,” Beau said, just a hint of snappishness to her words. “You could show up in one of Molly’s old suits or dresses for all I care, alright? If it’ll help us figure out what happened to him then do whatever the fuck you need. He wouldn’t have cared.”

“He- okay.”

“Yeah. So, just… yeah.” Beau trailed off, raising a hand and scrubbing it over her face as Caleb approached the table to place the scarf down. He could see a few small items already gathered at the base of the crystal ball; there was a small cluster of dried lavender, along with a photograph of Mollymauk and a length of grey ribbon adorned with blue and black flowers that had been tied in a bow. Carefully, Caleb folded the scarf and left it alongside the other items before taking his own seat at the table, looking up and over at Jester.

Jester looked back, glancing over at Beau. “So…” she said slowly, “are you- Beau, are you okay?”

“What?” Beau mumbled. “I’m- yeah, yeah, I’m good. I’m alright.” She nodded, seemingly more to herself than to Caleb or Jester, and leant back in her seat a little. “Now are you going to tell us about why we’re here for another seance or what?”

Jester frowned. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“ _Yes_.”

“…Okay. You just seem a little-”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Beau said again, but her voice lacked the vitriol that Caleb had heard in it the first time he’d met her. “I’m just- yeah. This is kind of a lot, you know? So the quicker we can get it over with, the better.”

“Well, alright then,” Jester replied, sounding dubious. She paused, giving Caleb a worried look, but when Caleb merely shrugged she took a breath, starting to speak. “Okay, so… _basically_ , I think there’s another ghost here and I really, _really_ want to talk to them. After you guys chatted to Molly I, like, tidied up and everything, and I cleansed the space – which is _super_ important to do, by the way – and I thought that I’d shooed all the ghosts away because there was only Molly _to_ shoo away, and he seemed pretty nice-“

“He was a dick,” Beau mumbled.

Jester rolled her eyes. “ _Fine_ , alright, he was a dick, but he seemed like a _nice_ dick! And you were, like, super good friends with him, Beau, and you’re nice, so Molly must have been nice too, but that’s not the point! The point is that I cleared the space, and put everything away, and did everything _right_ , and then this _other ghost_ showed up!”

Caleb frowned. “There is… there another ghost? Who is not Molly?”

“ _Obviously_ ,” Jester replied, giving Caleb a look that strongly implied that he wasn’t paying enough attention. “That’s what I _just said_ , Caleb.”

“I- _ja_ , I know you did, but how did- how did you know that there was another ghost? How did you know that it wasn’t just Molly?” Even as he asked the question, Caleb realises that he already knew the answer. He knew how Molly acted, how Molly behaved, how Molly interacted with the world and liked to make his presence known, and even in the short time that he’d know her he’d already got the impression that Jester was rather more perceptive and intuitive than he was. If he was able to tell Molly from some other spirit – and he had no doubt now that he could – then, surely, Jester would be able to do the same.

As he expected, Jester’s next words conveyed exactly that sentiment.

“Because they _didn’t act like Molly_ ,” she said pointedly. “They didn’t- they didn’t act like Molly, or do things that Molly did, and they didn’t _sound_ like him, either!”

“How the fuck could you-”

“You know what I mean, Beau! They didn’t _feel_ like Molly! They felt like someone else! Caleb, you know what I mean, right?”

“I- _ja_ ,” Caleb said, a little bit caught off-guard. “I mean, I have not encountered any other ghosts apart from Mollymauk, but I-”

“But you know what I mean,” Jester repeated. “Molly just feels like Molly! And this ghost didn’t! At first I didn’t realise that they were there because they only did little things, like knocking on the windows, and honestly that could have just been a squirrel or a weasel or something, but things kept happening, you know? My things kept moving around and things wouldn’t be where I left them and stuff like that, and it was just really weird and a bit freaky, but not like _bad_ freaky. Like, I’d put my scissors down somewhere and then when I needed them again they’d be right next to me but I wouldn’t even have to go looking for them, they’d just _be_ there! And one time someone reorganised some of my ribbons in the night! And I found this really pretty ribbon of, like, grey fabric with these really pretty little black and blue flowers had been all tied up in a _bow_ on my table!”

“Is that the…?” Beau asked, nodding towards the ribbon on the table.

Jester nodded. “Yeah! Yeah, that’s it! I thought it might help this ghost if I showed that I could tell that they were here and all that. And they seemed to be more active whenever I mentioned Molly -please don’t choke, Beau, it made sense at the time! – which is why I asked you guys to bring more of Molly’s things!”

“And the lavender is here because…?” Caleb prompted, still a little confused.

Jester sighed.

“Because it _smells nice_ ,” she said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And this ghost always smells kind of nice. Like, they smell a bit weird, like that smell you get before a really, _really_ big storm, but they also smell like flowers sometimes, so I thought that lavender could help. Now do we have to keep talking or can we summon this ghost and find out who they are?”

Caleb shrugged, leaning back in his chair as he placed his hands palm-up on the table. “I am fine with that if you are.”

“I am! Beau?”

“Yeah,” Beau muttered. “Yeah, I’m- yeah.” She coughed, clearing her throat, and then leaned forwards. Unlike at the previous séance, this time Beau reached for Caleb’s hand without hesitation. She reached across the table with only a glance in his direction, grabbing his hand and squeezing it firmly. Caleb squeezed back almost unconsciously, already reaching for Jester’s hand to complete the circle around the table.

“Are you ready?” he asked quietly, though he wasn’t entirely sure if he was asking the question of Beau or Jester. Jester nodded.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

There was a pause, and then Jester cleared her throat dramatically.

“Hi!” she said. “It’s me, Jester! I mean you probably know who I am because you seem to be living in my house, – which is super cool and all, you know, you seem really tidy and I really appreciate that – but I don’t know who you are and I wanted to change that! I’ve got two friends with me who are also super cool and very nice and super friendly, and I _think_ that you knew Mollymauk, so we’ve got some of his stuff because we know him too! We’ve got his scarf, and Beau brought a picture of him in case your memories are all ghost-ey too, so… yeah! Hi! We just want to have a _tiny_ chat, and hopefully all this should make it easier for you to do that! Thank you!”

Jester sat back in her chair a little, smiling widely, but Caleb could feel how tightly her hand was squeezing his own. And, as the silence grew, her grip only became tighter.

“ _Caleb_ ,” Beau hissed. “ _Caleb_. Is- is anyone here?”

Caleb frowned. “I can’t- I- why are you asking me?”

“Because you have your, y’know… your ghost-sensing shit. Is anyone here?”

“…I can only tell when Mollymauk is here, Beauregard.”

“ _Fuck_.”

“Shh!” Jester hissed loudly. “Shut _up_ , guys! I think I feel something!”

“What?” Beau asked immediately. “What is it, what do you- _oh_.”

Caleb noticed the moment that Beau felt something. Her eyes went wide, her hand tightening around Caleb’s, but Caleb couldn’t bring himself to query her because, at the exact same moment, he felt something too. It felt like lightning sliding down his spine, chasing static over his skin until he almost felt as though his hair should be standing on end. For a moment the air felt heavy, thick and oppressive and tainted with ozone like the shadow of a storm, but then the feeling passed, and all that Caleb could smell was the soft, faint scent of wildflowers.

Caleb blinked, and there on the table before him, was the semi-transparent, impossible form of a woman.

She was a large woman, larger than Caleb had expected based on what he had heard of her. She wasn’t curvy, not in the way that Jester was, but she was solidly built and he could see the muscles in her arms even in her translucent, ethereal form. Dark hair tumbled over her shoulders, turning white at the tips and plaited and braided throughout with a number of ribbons and beads woven in amongst the strands. Despite her stature, though, her expression was unexpectedly soft, and all of a sudden Caleb felt as though he recognised her. He hadn’t seen her before, he was sure of it, but something in her manner made him think of a younger Molly and Beau, and their other best friend following after them and keeping them out of trouble.

“ _Hello_ ,” the woman said softly, her voice soft and quiet, and, immediately, Beau gasped.

“ _Yasha_ ,” she said. “You- fuck, shit, _Yasha_.”

The woman – Yasha – smiled. “ _Beau_ ,” she said quietly. “ _It’s really good to see you again.”_

“You’re- fuck, _Yasha_. It was fucking _you_. You’re _here_.” Beau fell silent for a moment, staring numbly at the woman before her, before abruptly clearing her throat and speaking again. “How’ve- how’ve you, uh, how’ve you been?” she asked, presumably more out of habit or uncertainty than for any other reason, and from the look on her face Caleb could tell that she too was judging herself the moment the words left her mouth, but Yasha only shrugged, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“ _Well, I’m sort of dead_ ,” she said, just the faintest hint of wry amusement colouring her words, and Beau snorted. “ _It’s- it’s interesting. Um. Strange. Lonely… It takes people a while to notice me, if they realise that I’m there at all.”_

Across the table, Jester pulled an apologetic face. “Sorry,” she mumbled quietly. Yasha turned to look at her and Jester almost seemed to shrink into her seat. Caleb could feel her hand tightening around his own, squeezing so hard it was almost painful. “I- I wasn’t- I mean I haven’t actually dealt with any ghosts before, you know? I guess I spoke with Molly, but I didn’t- I’ve not had any ghosts in my house before, like, _properly_. I didn’t- I didn’t know there was anyone here! I’m really sorry about that.”

Yasha smiled. “ _It’s alright_ ,” she said, her voice just as soft and gentle as ever, and from that sentence alone Caleb felt himself warming to her further. He could see why Beauregard liked her. He could see why Molly liked her. He could see how her calmer, quieter temperament would have been needed to balance the two of them out, keeping them grounded right up until she herself got swept up in their flights of fancy. “ _It’s alright_ ,” Yasha said again. “ _You saw me in the end. That’s what matters.”_

“I- yeah, I mean, I guess, but it took me a while, and that was kind of rude of me- _”_

_“You didn’t know that you were looking for me_ ,” Yasha replied with a shrug. “ _I didn’t even know that I could interact with you guys until Molly did it. That was- that was a bit of a wake-up, I think_.”

Beau’s eyes widened. “You were- you were here for that? You _saw_ that?”

“ _I think so_ ,” Yasha said quietly. “ _I was- I saw_ something _. I saw someone. And they- they seemed kind of familiar to me, you know. And then I heard him speak. And then I heard_ you _speak, Beau_.”

Beau swallowed. “You…” she said quietly, lapsing off into silence. For a while she simply stared, her gaze entirely focused on the image of the woman before her, and then she seemed to shake herself, startling herself back into action. “Yash, how long have you- I mean, I know when you- when you and Molly- y’know… but how long have you been… here?”

“ _I’ve been around for a while,”_ Yasha replied, her words slow and thoughtful. “ _I’m not sure for how long, though. I think I- I think I wandered a lot. Not- not_ here _, where you all are, but… wherever I am. I didn’t see much. I didn’t see Molly. Whenever I was here I tended to be in the graveyard, or back home, or in places I’ve been to before_ - _”_

Jester gasped. “You’ve been in my shop _before_?” she asked. “Oh my god, how did I not remember you? You’re, like, really pretty and tall! I would definitely remember you!”

Yasha gave a short, surprised laugh. “ _No, no_ ,” she said, shaking her head. “ _Not when you were here. I mean, apart from what I’ve been doing as a- as- as what I am now. I came here a few times when I was alive, though. I liked looking at the ribbons. This was always a really nice shop to be in, even before you took over. It was very… cosy. I liked it_.”

“Do you like it now?” Jester asked, seeming unable to stop herself.

Yasha nodded. “ _I do,”_ she confirmed. “ _It feels nice, here. You made it very pretty. I like it a lot. It makes me feel a bit more… well, a bit more like me, I suppose_.”

Jester’s expression shifted, changing into something more resolute. “I’m going to leave out ribbons for you,” she said, her words leaving no space for discussion. “I can’t- I don’t know how to bring you back yet, or what I can even _do_ to help a ghost, or _any_ of that, but if pretty ribbons will cheer you up then I’m going to leave out so many pretty ribbons for you!”

“Jes,” Beau said quietly. “You don’t- you don’t need to do that.”

“I _want_ to. I mean, it probably sucks, being dead. Does it suck, Yasha?”

For a moment, Yasha seemed taken aback, but her smile remained just as soft and faint and present as before. “ _I- I suppose it does,_ ” she said after a pause, blinking. “ _It definitely isn’t my favourite state of being that I’ve found myself in. It’s very… quiet. It’s very lonely._ ”

Across the table, Beau cleared her throat. “Yasha?”

“ _Yes, Beau?”_

“What- what happened? What happened to you and Molly?”

Somehow, Yasha’s smile didn’t fade in the slightest. “ _I thought you’d ask that_ ,” she said, her voice quiet. “ _I- how much do you want to know_?”

“Everything.”

“ _Starting from where?”_

“From when I wasn’t there,” Beau clarified. “From the very beginning, Yasha. Did you see anything, did you- did you notice anything that Molly didn’t? _What happened?”_

“ _There was- there was a man_ ,” Yasha replied, frowning. Her voice softened, somehow becoming even quieter in the breathless, waiting silence that held the table in its velvet grasp. “ _He was- well, he was watching us. He was watching_ Molly _. Molly has always drawn attention, though. He – well, I mean, you know this, Beau – but he is- he_ was _very, um, loud. Not always vocally, but often that. Just… he was colourful. Everywhere he went, people looked at him. He was weird - not just because he was a tiefling, though that did make him stand out more - and that made all of us weird and strange by association. I didn’t mind it, though. That was… it was normal, for us. Molly liked being in the spotlight, and that meant that I could stay in the shadows at the edges. People only really saw Molly. They didn’t see me, and I liked it like that.”_ Yasha paused, drawing in a breath. Distantly, Caleb wondered if it was necessary for her. He wondered if it was possible for her. He could see the blood around her throat, marring and marking her pale skin. “ _Which meant,”_ Yasha continued, her voice quieter than before, “ _that when I spotted someone watching us in the pub, I didn’t really think anything of it, even when it happened a few times. He was clearly someone new to town, but that just made it_ less _odd. Most people here knew us. They knew Molly, and what he was, and what he was like. People here are- they were accustomed to us. New people and visitors weren’t.”_

“You can say that again,” Beau replied, fondness born of a shared recollection warming her voice. “Remember that time we hopped the train to Zadash? And Molly wore that- that really stupid waistcoat of his, with all the embroidery? And that conductor asked if he was from the circus or whatever and Molly just agreed with him and spun up some stupid story about shit that he’d got up to and how you were a strong-woman and I was a- a fire-eater, I think he said. That was fuckin’ great.”

Yasha smiled. “ _It was,”_ she agreed, humour colouring her voice. “ _It was less great when the conductor realised that none of us had tickets_.”

Beau shrugged. “Yeah, maybe, but he backed down pretty quick when you stood up and did your scary-glare, though. So that was all fine. He seemed pretty chill about it, too.”

_“Mm, he did. He was one of the nicer people we met, though. Not everyone was like that_.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“ _And this guy, the one at the pub… I don’t know, I guess that after I while I sort of assumed that maybe he was alright with tieflings. He watched us a few times, but he never did anything. At first, I thought that he might just be one of those people who’s kind of… well, kind of shitty about tieflings. I know they exist, I’ve met a few. But he never said anything, or did anything, so I figured that maybe I had misjudged him. Maybe he was alright with tieflings after all.”_

“I’m going to guess that he wasn’t,” Beau said, one corner of her mouth tugging into a smirk that gave Caleb the impression that she’d dealt with a number of people who were not overly fond of tieflings. “He must have been real fuckin’ quiet for me not to notice him, too! Normally I clock them before you _or_ Molly do!”

Yasha’s smile widened. “ _You do_ ,” she said. “ _But this man was… I don’t know. He was big, very big, but he didn’t… he faded away, somehow. He looked normal, even if we all knew that he was a stranger. Even when he was watching it wasn’t obvious. But even if you had noticed him, I don’t know if it would have mattered. You weren’t there that night,”_ Yasha continued, and her words were unsure now, softer and less certain. “ _You were- I’m not sure. I can’t remember. But that was when- I don’t know if it’s because you weren’t there, or because he just chose then to do it, but the man started getting… aggressive. I can’t remember all of it but I know that he- that he tried to rile Molly up. That he tried to rile_ me _up. But Molly was Molly so it didn’t really work, not at first, but the guy didn’t back down and he seemed to know exactly how to annoy Molly and just he kept on pushing, and at one point the bartender told us that we’d have to get out, and so we ended up in that little alley out back of the pub. And then he- he…”_

“…He what?” Beau asked quietly. In her voice, Caleb could hear that she knew the answer just as well as he did.

_“He stabbed Molly_ ,” Yasha said simply. “ _He just- he got Molly on the ground, and he stabbed him. That was it. There wasn’t any- he didn’t say anything, you know? Normally when people try to fight us they like to insult us, and swear, and- and accuse us of things that make Molly laugh and try to outdo them, but this man didn’t. Not once we were outside. He knew- he knew what he was doing, Beau.”_

“You mean like- _”_

“ _It wasn’t impulsive,”_ Yasha said, and something in her tone made Caleb shiver. “ _It wasn’t- he_ knew _what he was doing. It was quick. Efficient. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he knew how to rile Molly up, and he knew not to do it when both of us were there, Beau, and he- he just knew! He knew all these things, and he was so clean and efficient about it, too. I didn’t- I didn’t even get a chance to stop him. I didn’t even get a chance to protect Molly. I didn’t get a chance to do anything it all. It just… happened. And then, when Molly was dead, he killed me, too_.”

_“_ Fuck, _Yasha_ ,” Beau whispered.

_“He said something before he killed me_ ,” Yasha continued, as though she hadn’t heard Beau speak at all. She lifted her hands slightly, twisting them together before her. “ _He said- he said… I don’t know_.” She blinked, tears starting to gather beneath her eyes. “ _I don’t_ know,” she whispered. “ _I don’t know what he said, I just- I can’t remember it, I can’t find it, but I know that he said something, and that at the time it was important. It mattered. It- I knew who was killing us, I think. Just before I died, I knew_. _I’m- I’m sorry_.”

“Yash,” Beau said quietly. “Yasha, no, you couldn’t have- it’s not your fault.”

_“I’m sorry,”_ Yasha whispered again. Even in her monochrome, unreal form, Caleb could still see the tears on her cheeks. “ _I’m sorry I couldn’t save him_.”

Beau shook her head. “No,” she managed to say, but her voice was thick with unshed tears. “You- _Yasha_ -”

“ _I’m sorry,_ ” Yasha said again, with such heartbreak and anguish in her voice that Caleb felt his own heart clench from it, and then, between one breath and the next she was gone.

In the grave-still silence of the apartment, Caleb could hear the exact moment that Beauregard drew in one shaking, shattering breath.

“Fuck,” she whispered quietly. “Fuck, fuck, _shit-_ ”

“Beau,” Jester said, concern clear in her voice, but Beau didn’t seem to hear her, her curses growing in volume.

“What the- what the fuck do we _do_?” Beau asked. Her fingers flexed around Caleb’s, tightening and squeezing for a moment, but didn’t let go. “Do we- no one fucking knows who this guy who fuckin’ killed them is! No one! We’ve talked to- we’ve talked to _two goddamn ghosts_ , the ghosts of my fuckin’ best friends, and we still don’t know! No one fucking knows! It’s all just- it’s just questions and mystery and bullshit and it’s fucking _bullshit_!”

“Beauregard,” Caleb said, but Beau seemed to ignore him just as she had Jester, continuing to speak.

“It’s _bullshit!”_ she repeated, and she was crying now, rough and angry and ignoring the tears as best she could. “It’s just- Gods, _fuck_ , I thought I could- I thought I would figure this shit out! I knew it wasn’t right, I knew right from the start that this was fucking bullshit but no one listened, and then I _got back here_ and I had access to everything and I thought I’d fucking figure this out and find out what happened but I fucking _couldn’t_ and now- and now there’s _ghosts_. Now there’s actual, literal, goddamn fucking _ghosts_ of my best friends, and even with them here, we’re no _fucking_ closer to finding out the truth!”

“Um,” Caleb said tentatively. “I, ah… Beauregard, I’m not sure if I entirely agree with, ah, with that. We know something, now. We know that they were both killed. We know that it wasn’t an accident.”

“I already knew that,” Beau snapped back, but the anger in her voice was fading now, chased away by a chill sort of emptiness. “I didn’t need them to tell me that.”

“Well, now we know for certain,” Caleb countered. “We know that- we know that it was a murder, and we have some idea of who did it, even if we don’t know who they are.”

Beau snorted. “Fuckin’ great. We’ve managed to narrow our subject pool down to _everyone but the residents of Alfield_. Great. Dandy. That really helps, you know?”

Caleb didn’t have anything to say to that. He fell quiet as silence descended upon the table once again, staring down at the objects laid out before him. Somehow, during the course of the séance some of them had shifted a little. The scarf had been disturbed, no longer lying in the neat pile that Caleb had placed it down in, and the picture of Mollymauk had shifted, turning around on the table until it was facing Caleb. He could see Mollymauk’s smile, could see the single curl of his hair that laid across his forehead, and some part of his heart ached at the sight of it. He wanted to see Molly again. He wanted to hear Molly’s voice.

“We could ask Fjord?” Jester suggested quietly. Her voice broke the silence, around them, shattering it like glass, and all of a sudden Caleb felt as though he could breathe again, his lungs finally free of whatever frozen grasp had been holding them since the séance ended. He coughed, letting go off Beau’s hand and she abruptly snatched it away from him, and felt Jester’s hand slip from his grasp, too. “I mean,” Jester continued, “I mean, she- Yasha- she _did_ say that the guy was at the inn a few times, right? And, I mean, Fjord works there a lot. Like, a _lot,_ a lot.”

“He- yeah,” Beau said. Her voice was unexpectedly soft and just a little bit hoarse, and then she coughed again, and when she continued speaking her words sounded more certain. “He does,” she confirmed. “He was- he’s been working there pretty much since he was old enough to pull pints, I think. That was, like... I don’t know. A while ago. He’s always been working there. He’s a good guy. I mean, I didn’t _know_ him, not like I knew Yasha and Molly, but he- yeah. He’s good. He knew who we were.”

“Maybe Fjord saw him.” Jester said. “This guy who was apparently watching you. Maybe he- maybe- maybe he noticed this new guy, right? Like, Yasha said that she didn’t recognise the guy, and Molly- Molly said that too when we spoke to him, you know? He wasn’t from here, and if Fjord’s been working at Uk'otoa’s Eye for that long then he probably knows everyone who normally goes there. So he would know if someone was new and- and out of place, and all that, right? Right?” She raised her head, looking at Caleb. On her lower lashes, tears sparkled like shards of frost. “Right?”

Caleb could only shrug. “I suppose so,” he said. “I haven’t- I have only met this ‘Fjord’ once, Jester.”

“He’ll know,” Beau said flatly. “We can- sure, yeah, we can do that. We can ask Fjord. He knows things.”

“Do you… do you want to go _now_?” Jester asked cautiously.

“ _Yes_.”

“Are you sure?”

“ _Yes_ , I’m sure,” Beau replied. She lifted a hand, scrubbing it roughly across her face, and when she dropped it to lie atop the table her eyes were as sharp as daggers. “I’m doing this. I don’t- I don’t care what I have to do, I am _going_ to find out what happened to Yasha and Molly, and there’s no time like the present. So, come on. Let’s go.” Beau stood up from the table, giving a wry, humourless smile. “Let’s go ask Fjord about my dead best friends.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be posted on **November 18th!**


	15. Chapter 15

No one spoke during the short walk to Uk’atoa’s Eye. The air around them seemed heavier, somehow, colder and closer as though it were trying to weigh their limbs down with frozen lead. A solemnity hung above them, dressing them in unseen mourning clothes as they walked through the near-silent streets of Alfield, a silent procession for two long-dead friends. The silence was mostly familiar to Caleb, but the quietness of both Jester and Beauregard made it feel decidedly uncomfortable. It felt as though the world was holding its breath, waiting for things to settle before exhaling once again. Small sounds came through from the village around them but they seemed distant somehow, far off and faint, though gradually growing clearer as Beau and Jester continued to guide Caleb through the streets before they finally slowed to a stop.

“Is this it?” Caleb asked, looking over the building they’d stopped in front of. It looked much the same to many of the buildings they’d passed, built of the same grey stone and dark timber, and at a glance there was little to distinguish it from anywhere else within the village. “It looks- oh.”

“Sometimes you really need to look up, Caleb,” Jester said as Caleb followed her pointing finger to the sign that hung above the door. Her voice lacked some of its usual playfulness, but just hearing her speak again lessened the weight of Yasha’s memory and words, making the world seem more real and alive. “For a smart guy you can be really unobservant. That might be why it took you so long to realise that ghosts actually exist, you know.”

“… I don’t think that was the problem-”

“It _totally_ was,” Jester interrupted, but Caleb could see her smiling a little from the corner of his eye as he continued to inspect the sign. It looked to be an old sign, long since faded by time and weather, but Caleb could still see the wide, golden, staring eye that was painted on it, the colours almost uncomfortably strong and bold given how faded and peeling the rest of the paint was. It creaked gently in the wind, but the movement wasn’t significant enough to stop Caleb from reading the text written across the bottom of it: _Uk’atoa’s Eye_.

“Who’s Uk’atoa?” he asked, looked back at Jester with a frown. He’d thought the name had sounded unusual the first time he’d heard it – it definitely wasn’t a classic Dwendalian name, but it also didn’t fit with the naming style of anywhere else that he knew.

Beau shrugged. “Dunno,” she replied. “Think it might be the owner, but I’m not sure. Only Fjord really seems to know who the owner of this place even is.”

“I… I see. And are you sure that it’s open? It seems rather quiet from out here.”

Beau snorted. “It’s always open,” she said. “It’s pretty much the only decent pub in Alfield, Caleb, and I’m pretty sure the owner has got some weird policy about making sure it’s always open. No one seems to complain though.”

“Ah,” Caleb replies. “And you- your friend, Fjord, will he also be-”

“Yup.”

“I know all his shifts,” Jester added. “He’s here a lot anyway, though. I think he has some really weird contract with his boss or something like that.” She reached forwards, pushing open the door. “It should be pretty quiet right now, too. It’s _super_ early for most people to get here.”

The door to the pub swung open before her, letting out a surge of warm air. Caleb shivered as it encircled him, only then realising just how cold the biting winter air truly was. He hadn’t really noticed the cold as they’d been walking. Up on top of the hill, in the abandoned, draughty hallways of Tealeaf Manor, not even fire could keep the cold entirely at bay. These days, Caleb couldn’t even be sure if he would want it to, either. Not when he knew who was hiding within it.

He paused, taking a breath, and then followed Jester inside, hearing Beau walking in after him. The pub, Caleb saw immediately, was small. He’d been expecting that based on what he knew of the village and its tiny size, but it still came as a bit of a shock to him after so much time spent in Rexxentrum. It was furnished with, bizarrely, a bit of a nautical theme, with webbing and shells adorning the walls and the occasional sailing flag hanging draped across the ceiling, almost as though it were trying to distance itself from the truth of its nature. No amount of sea-salt scented perfume, though, could disguise the reek of old beer, and no amount of care or cleaning could stop Caleb’s boots from coming away from the ground with a faintly sticky sound as he followed Jester across the room to the bar. The pub’s scattered handful of occupants didn’t even glance up as he passed them, instead continuing their quiet conversations or sitting in silent solitude in the little tucked-away corners of the room.

The person behind the bar didn’t look up, either. Caleb recognised the half-orc immediately – even with his face hidden his green skin was apparent beneath the neat outfit he was wearing, clearly marking him out from the rest of the townsfolk. From what Caleb had seen, excluding Jester, Fjord, and Caduceus, they all appeared to be humans, with a handful of halflings and gnomes also dwelling within the village. For a moment he wondered how out of place Molly must have felt his first few days in Alfield, when there was no Jester or Fjord to tip the balance and he and his brother could very well have been the only non-humans (or halflings, or gnomes) save for Caduceus and Gustav present in the entire village. Would Molly have minded that? Would he have cared? Or would he have revelled in it, delighting in being such a novelty and a curiosity in a place where so much else would have been bland and boring to him? How had he reacted?

How had _Lucien_ reacted?

Caleb didn’t get much time to ponder the answers, though, as barely a moment after Jester came to stop just before the bar, Fjord half-turned towards them, still not raising his gaze from the glass he was apparently entirely engrossed in cleaning.

“Howdy, folks!” Fjord called out, and Caleb frowned, stopping a few feet behind Jester. He’d met Fjord before, he _knew_ he had, and he was very certain that the half-orc had sounded nothing like what he sounded like now. He sounded… well, if Caleb was entirely honest he wasn’t sure _where_ Fjord’s accent was supposed to be from, only that it differed from the refined accent he’d had before about as dramatically as was possible. “I’ll be with y’all in just a moment, ‘scuse me- oh.”

“Hi, Fjord!” Jester said, giving a small wave as Fjord raised his head, finally spotted them. “It’s just us, don’t worry.”

“Oh!” Fjord replied, the smile on his face rapidly morphing into something rather more authentic. “Oh, hey, Jester. And Beau. And Mr Caleb too, I see.”

Caleb frowned further. “Why are you- forgive me, I thought you had a different accent last time we met-”

“Oh, I apologise!” Fjord replied, his voice immediately returning to the accent it had held when Caleb first met him. “You’re not wrong, I don’t normally speak quite like this. I was just… the owner of the pub prefers it if I, ah, ‘spice things up’ a bit by putting on an accent, though it does sound a bit… well, a bit foolish.”

“I think it’s a lovely spicy accent,” Jester said, smiling widely at Fjord.

Fjord gave a short laugh, and for a moment Caleb thought he saw his cheeks darkening slightly. “Well it’s- I- thank you, Jester.”

“Your normal voice is really nice too, though!”

“Ah, not everyone seems to agree with that-”

“Nott just has bad taste in voices,” Jester said casually, and this time the dark spots on Fjord’s cheeks were even more apparent.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, well, I-”

“Yeah, yeah, alright, enough with all of that,” Beau interrupted loudly, stepping forward and visibly placing herself between Fjord and Jester with a roll of her eyes. “You guys can fuckin’ flirt as much as you want later, okay? We’ve gotta- Jessie, you know why we’re here. We need to get answers, and that means that you need to stop flirting with Fjord for a while.”

“Aw,” Jester said, visibly deflating, but after a moment’s pause and a stern glare from Beau she visibly shook herself, straightening up and setting her face. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re right, we- Fjord, we’re here to ask you some questions!”

Fjord raised an eyebrow, seeming a little caught off guard by the abrupt change of tone. “I- alright,” he said slowly. “Questions about what, exactly?”

“People who came through here,” Beau replied. “Over, like… the last few years, I guess? When I was still here but before I left, you know? Then. Just if you ever saw anyone a bit odd.”

Fjord exhaled a long, steady breath, frowning to himself as he leant back against the cupboards. The glasses clinked and rattled gently behind him, sounding similar to how the glass of the windows rattled when Mollymauk needed some way to express his displeasure, or to catch Caleb’s attention after the usual methods had failed to work. “Well,” Fjord said slowly. “I don’t- I cannot remember _everyone_ who has come through here-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Beau interrupted, her eyes narrowed in a glare. “I’m not expecting you to tell me _everyone_ you’ve ever met, Fjord. Just… if anyone _weird_ came through? Or, like, not even weird people. Just people who acted a bit weird. A bit shifty. People from out of town.”

Fjord raised an eyebrow, inclining his head towards Caleb with just the faintest hint of a smile. “You mean apart from him?”

“ _Obviously_ I mean apart from Caleb.”

“Alright, alright. It was just an attempt to lighten the mood a bit. You all seem rather glum.”

“We’re glum because _Beau’s best friends are dead!”_ Jester retorted, crossing her arms over her chest and joining Beau in glaring at Fjord. “Keep _up,_ Fjord!”

“…Okay, well, I didn’t quite know that when we started this,” Fjord said, his faint smile faltering and fading. “That’s, um… that’s very bad. I’m sorry for your loss, Beau.”

“It was years ago,” Beau muttered. “But… thanks. I guess.”

“You’re welcome. But in terms of strangers coming through… well, let me think.” Fjord trailed off, lifting a hand and tapping his thumb against his chin. “There was- do you want visitors from a particular time, or just over the last few years? Because that may help a bit, you know. If you narrow it down for me.”

“The same year Molly died,” Beau snapped. “The _obvious_ year to be checking.”

“Alright! Alright, okay, yes, I suppose that makes sense.”

“It makes _so much sense_ ,” Jester added, rolling her eyes, and despite the seriousness of the situation Caleb found himself having to stifle a smile. “Come _on_ , Fjord! You’re normally super smart.”

“I am- do you think I’m smart?”

“ _Yes_. But not right now, apparently. Apparently right now you’re being really _dumb_ for some reason which is super _not_ helpful when we’re trying to solve a murder!”

Fjord ducked his head a bit. “I- I apologise,” he murmured, but Caleb could still see a slight hint of darkness in his cheeks. “I will- the year Molly died, you said?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Alright, okay, give me just a moment to think.” Fjord lifted his head a little, frowning at the opposite wall for a moment before starting to speak again, once again tapping his thumb against his chin. “Yes, we got a few visitors that year,” Fjord said, nodding to himself. “There were some- well, some visitors of Lord Gustav’s, I think. They made my boss rather happy, you know, what with their rather, ah, rather more _refined_ taste, though they weren’t so fond of the whole accent thing, which was quite a pleasant break. I think we may have had a few others? I’m not sure, though, it was quite a while ago. My memory doesn’t tend to keep hold of, ah, _unimportant_ details.”

Jester let out an indignant squeak. “This isn’t unimportant! This is super important, it’s _really_ important, it’s-”

“I know, I know” Fjord said hastily. “I am- give me a moment, alright? I’m trying to help you guys out.”

“If you want to help us out then _remember_ ,” Beau said pointedly.

Fjord frowned. “I’m remembering as best I can-”

“Remember harder.”

“ _Dead best friends_ ,” Jester hissed. “This is _important_ , Fjord.”

“I’m not saying that it isn’t!” Fjord replied, raising his hands slightly. “It’s just- listen, Jester, how much do you remember from back then, hm? In detail?”

“I remember- I can- look, that doesn’t matter! We’re asking you the questions!”

“And I am trying my very best to answer them! But sometimes you need to give a man a chance to think.”

Jester groaned. “ _Ugh,_ fine! But we really, _really_ need these answers, Fjord.”

“Did you ever see anyone weird?” Beau prompted. “Anyone, like, kinda big? Someone who maybe watched me and Molly and Yasha a lot? Picked a fight with them one time when I wasn’t there? Ended up getting kicked out with both of them into the alley out back? Come _on,_ Fjord, you’ve gotta remember that!”

“Oh. Oh! Oh, yes, I do remember that!” Fjord said, his entire expression brightening. “Yes, that was- gods, that was a while ago, wasn’t it? I do remember that, though. I thought Molly was going to break another table.”

“Uh-huh, cool, great. Do you remember what the guy was like?”

“He was big,” Fjord said immediately, and Jester groaned again.

“ _Fjord_ ,” she said, “we need more than that! We can’t do detective work without proper information and clues!”

“He was very big,” Fjord added, only to wince when Beau reached out and, without batting an eye, punched him gently on one arm. “ _Ow_. He was very big, and he had a- a- well, not quite an _unusual_ name, you know, but not one that I’d ever heard before. I can’t quite remember what it was, though. And he seemed… not unpleasant, I’m not sure I would call him that, but very… _certain_. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing and what he wanted. Didn’t ask what drinks we were serving, didn’t ask for information about the town, just told me what he’d be having to drink and that was it.”

“He didn’t ask you anything?” Caleb asked. “Nothing at all? Really?” He was aware that he’d asked very few questions when he’d first arrived in Alfield, but he’d come to Alfield for a very different purpose to the strange man who had murdered Molly and Yasha. In a way, he’d come to Alfield to clean up the final ripple effects of the event that had happened all those years ago. “Not even about somewhere to stay? You made it sound like he was here for a while.”

“Oh, yes, he was here for a few weeks, if I recall correctly,” Fjord said, nodding. “But no, he never asked about that. I assumed he was staying with someone, or at The Wildmother’s Arms, but he never mentioned it. It wasn’t my place to pry, though, so I didn’t. He was quiet, and he paid for his drinks, so I never had any reason to go asking questions. It’s not exactly my job.”

“I suppose you’ve got a point,” Beau said in a disgruntled tone, at the exact same moment that Jester grumbled, “But it would be useful if it _was_.”

Caleb shifted a little, moving his weight from one foot to the other as he thought for a moment. He didn’t like this, didn’t like the confusion and the lack of direction, and with every passing moment he felt he better understood the anger that had been so apparent in Beau not even an hour earlier. Every time they seemed to be making progress, every time they seemed to be learning some new information, or uncovering some new fact, or even encountering an entirely new ghost with an entirely new perspective on the whole event, _something_ was still there blocking them, preventing them from finding the information they needed. Even if they just had a name, a single name that Caleb could perhaps send back to Rexxentrum, that would still be something to go on.

But he knew that not everyone had his memory. Fjord certainly didn’t. But there had to be some other way of knowing, some other record of the stranger’s visit. There always was. There _had_ to be. Caleb knew better than anyone else that the modern world ran on paperwork, even in smaller places such as Alfield. Record-keeping was important. Record-keeping mattered.

Perhaps, right now, record-keeping was what they needed.

Caleb cleared his throat. “Listen, Fjord,” he started, “this man you mentioned… do you have any receipts you could go through for more information? I imagine you keep track of payments, _ja_? Do you- would you have any records from that year, somewhere you might have written his-”

Fjord snapped his fingers. “Lorenzo!” he said suddenly. “ _That_ was his name! We had it written down for his bar tab, Caleb! I just remembered – it was such an unusual name, I’d never seen it before. It was right on the- right on the tip of my tongue, you know, this whole time. Gods. I wouldn’t have wanted to disturb the boss to go through the record to find it, either. He can get a little, ah, a little _tetchy_ , I think I would say. But this man, Lorenzo… yes, we have records of the drinks he ordered. I never had to follow up on them, though – he was very good at paying for his drinks. He didn’t cause much hassle at all, actually, not until he- well. Not until then. I don’t really remember much about him before, if I’m entirely honest. He wasn’t exactly the most talkative of people, you know. He seemed to prefer to sit by himself over in the corner, generally being quiet, though we traded a few words at the bar when I was serving him.”

“Did he say anything useful?” Beau asked immediately. “Like, did he talk about why he was in town? If he was visiting anyone? Any murderous plans he might have?”

“He mentioned that he was visiting from Rexxentrum…” Fjord said slowly, frowning at Beau. “He didn’t tell me what he was doing here, though, or who he was visiting. Which is fair enough, though. Not everyone wants their personal business to be known-”

“This man is a _murderer,_ Fjord!”

“-I know, Jester. I was- look I’m getting to it, alright?” Fjord sighed, lifting a hand and rubbing at his eyes for a moment before shaking his head and continuing. “Look, like I said, he didn’t tell me if he was visiting anyone, so I left it at that. _However_ , as I was going to say before I was so rudely interrupted-”

“Sorry.”

“…it’s alright. This man, Lorenzo, never mentioned if he was visiting anyone. But I did see him meeting someone outside the pub a few times.”

Jester gasped. “ _What?_ ” she exclaimed. “Who? Where? When? _Fjord!_ Why didn’t you lead with that?”

“Because you asked me if I ever saw him doing anything weird!” Fjord said defensively. “And meeting people isn’t weird! It’s a perfectly ordinary thing to do! Even if they were meeting in the alley out back most of the time, but what people get up to back there is their business, and I only ever saw it for a few seconds as I was walking in to work.”

“What did they look like, though?” Beau asked. “The- the person that this ‘Lorenzo’ was meeting. What did they look like? Anything distinctive about them?”

“Not particularly. I didn’t really get a good look at their face, what with how they always seemed to be at least somewhat in shadow, and they wore- well, they wore clothes that sort of obscured their shape, somewhat.”

“What were the clothes like? What were they wearing?”

“They had some strange sort of coat and cloak situation going on,” Fjord replied, shrugging. “I just remember thinking that the hood was rather large, but I’m not sure if I’d call that suspicious.”

“What colour was it? Was the person tall? Short? Human? Elf? Orc? Did you see their face? Did you know them? _Tell me_ , Fjord!”

“Beau, I just told you that I didn’t really see their face. And they were a perfectly average height, you know. They were a perfectly normal, standard, average-height looking individual. Everything looks sort of orange and yellow in the lamp-like so I couldn’t really tell their skin colour and it looked like they were wearing gloves – which _also_ wasn’t strange, Jester, so don’t give me that look, Lorenzo was here quite close to winter and you know perfectly well how cold it gets – and they just seemed… quite normal. I never saw them leave because I always had a shift to get to, and I never saw them around town, either.”

“Do you remember _anything at all?”_ Beau pushed. “Anything even _remotely_ fuckin’ useful? Anything?”

There was a pause.

“I remember the coat they were wearing…” Fjord said slowly. “I couldn’t see the person’s face, you know, not with the dark and how their hood was pulled up, but I could- I remember the coat. It wasn’t particularly distinctive, except that it looked a bit nicer than what most of us have, but there was- towards the end of the conversation, the man moved a little, and I noticed the light shining off the buttons of his coat.”

Jester gasped. “Nott knows a lot about buttons!” she said immediately. “She knows so much about buttons! Maybe she could identify them if you told her what they looked like! Maybe she’ll know who uses them, or who- or who sells them, and then we just have to find _that_ person and find out who they sold a coat to and then find _them_ and find out why they were talking to weird creepy man and _then_ we’ll know who killed Molly!”

“Perhaps,” Fjord replied, sounding a little caught off-guard by Jester’s sudden outburst of enthusiasm. “That sounds reasonable, I suppose. And I don’t think Nott would have too much issue finding the buttons that I saw. They were very… distinctive. I don’t think I’ve ever seen buttons like them before.”

“What did they look like?” Caleb asked. There was something prickling at the back of his mind, running along his nerves like the crackle in the air just before a lightning strike. He could _feel_ something brewing, could feel some realisation or revelation waiting to reveal itself, but he couldn’t see what it was yet. He couldn’t see what he felt so clearly that he should already know. “You keep mentioning these buttons, Fjord. Just tell us what they looked like.”

“They looked like eyes,” Fjord replied, and immediately, Caleb felt the lightning strike. “They looked like ornate, decorative eyes. Like they’d- like they’d been engraved, you know? They looked a bit-”

“Abstract,” Caleb said absently, and Fjord paused.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, exactly that. How did- how did you know that, Caleb?”

Caleb lifted his arms, hugging himself tightly. He could feel the soft fabric of Molly’s scarf around his neck, pressing against his skin like a sigh, like a touch, like a kiss, and he shivered. “I-” he started, immediately cutting himself off. “I have- I have seen them. I have seen those same buttons, I think.”

Jester gasped. “ _Where?”_ she asked. “Where did you see them? And when? And- and how?”

“I saw them in the house,” Caleb murmured, inclining his head in the vague direction of Tealeaf Hill. “When Beauregard and Nott visited to help open some locked doors that I had found. They- we went to the study first, and Nott opened the door there, and then they went upstairs to unlock Lucien’s room while I investigated the office.”

From beside Jester, Caleb heard Beau give a tiny gasp, but he didn’t stop talking. He couldn’t stop talking. Not now. Not when everything in his head was slowly, quietly, perfectly starting to slot together, falling into place like puzzle pieces. _The buttons_.

“There was a photograph,” he continued, still not looking up at his small, gathered audience. “Behind the desk, Gustav had a framed photograph of himself and Molly- of himself and his sons. I was curious about it and so I went and looked and-” _And saw Molly,_ his mind supplied. _And could tell, even when everything was sepia, which one was Molly, and exactly what his laugh would have sounded like_. “-and saw what they were wearing.” He swallowed. “What Lucien was wearing.”

“That fucker,” Beau breathed.

“Lucien’s coat had those buttons,” Caleb said quietly, and, next to him, Beau swore under her breath. “His coat had- every single one of the buttons had an eye carved onto them. I do not know for certain if it was the same coat, but I cannot imagine that buttons with eye engravings are particularly common anywhere, especially in a place as small as this, and- _ja_. Lucien’s coat had eye buttons. I saw them.”

In the silence following his words, the only sound beyond the faint background noises of the bar’s other patrons was the sighing of the wind against the windows.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Beau said, a little louder this time. “He- _gods_ , Caleb, how did you- why didn’t you say anything?”

“It was never relevant before now!” Caleb said defensively. “It never- I had no reason to assume that Lucien killed- that Lucien did anything, and neither did any of you. Part of my job is to _find_ him, in fact! I did not think that details of a coat would be so important.”

“That _fucker!”_ Beau swore again. “That fucking- that fucking _arsehole_ , that shit stain, he killed his- he killed his fucking brother! He killed his _fucking brother!_ He couldn’t even do it himself, he just _hired_ someone and had them kill Molly _and_ Yasha and he- he’s- _fuck!”_ Beau turned, crossing the room in hurried, stomping strides. “Fuck!” she said again.

“ _Beau!”_ Fjord called out. “I’d- I’d rather you not disturb the other patrons! You know this, I’ve told you it enough times.”

“ _Fuck you, Fjord!”_

“Dead best-”

“ _Yes_ , dead best friends, I _know_ , Jester!”

Beau crossed the room, back to them, her footsteps only marginally quieter than they’d been before. “We’re going up to the house,” she said, leaving no space for argument in her words. “All of us, right now, we’re going up to the house, and _you_ -“ she turned slightly, jabbing a finger into Caleb’s chest that he felt even through the thick layer of his coat, “-are showing me this painting, and then we’re going to- I don’t know, we’re going to find the coat, alright? Because this is- it’s- _gods_ , this is messed up.”

“Um,” Jester said quietly. “Can I- I mean, not that I don’t _want_ to go, obviously, I’m super brave, but could I- what if I stay at my house, yeah? Just in case Yasha comes back and wants to talk some more. I don’t want to leave her alone and make her think we abandoned her or anything.”

Beau nodded. “Yeah, you do that,” she replied. “You keep an eye out for Yasha in case she- fuck, I don’t know, in case she can tell you anything else, and Caleb and I will go and- we’ll- we’ll look around. We’ll- yeah. We’ll look around the house.”

“Am I not invited?” Fjord asked, his voice just a touch too jovial to be serious, but the moment Beau turned to glare at him he quietened. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I wouldn’t- I’m perfectly fine staying down here, at my job, where I am paid to be.”

“ _Good_ ,” Beau said shortly. She reached out, grabbing Caleb by one sleeve. “C’mon, Caleb. Let’s go. I don’t want to- I’m not letting Molly wait. Not any longer.”

“Stay safe, Beau!” Jester called, as Beau started dragging Caleb towards the door. “Look after each other up there, okay?”

“I will- I will try my best!” Caleb replied, before the door to the pub shut behind them, and then he felt Beau tug at his sleeve again, and he turned to follow her out of the village.

They walked from Uk’atoa’s Eye to the base of Tealeaf Hill in absolute, unbroken silence. Caleb felt that he should say something, felt almost as though he should _apologise_ for mentioning the coat and the buttons he had seen on it, but he knew that was stupid. They were trying to find out what had happened to Mollymauk, no matter how unpleasant it might be. Any clue, and piece of information, anything at all that might possibly point them in the right direction was a good thing, for all that it drew every carefully repressed thought and feeling ever closer to the surface of their thoughts. Caleb couldn’t even imagine what was going through Beau’s mind. He could barely understand his own mind right now, could barely follow the twisted, tangled threads of thought and longing and fondness and adoration that hung around Mollymauk, catching him in their weave and ensnaring him and his memory within Caleb’s mind. What was he supposed to do about Molly? What was he supposed to do about _any_ of this? He could hardly tell Beauregard that he thought he might be falling for the spirit of her best friend. He knew himself that it could only end in disaster or sadness, knew that he should be trying to rein his feelings in and keep them at bay, but he couldn’t. Something about Molly cut through his trepidation and confusion every time, drawing him in like a moth to a candle flame. He _wanted_ to be close to Mollymauk. He wanted to know more about him, wanted to talk with him, wanted to see him and hold him and touch him and generally exist in his presence, alive or dead.

He wanted all of him, and what a bitter, terrible want it was.

Abruptly, Caleb felt a hand settle around his own. He flinched, jerking his head towards the touch, but all he saw was Beau, looking resolutely ahead, not giving any acknowledgement of how her hand was now wrapped around his own. For a moment Caleb frowned, unsure of what she was doing, and then he followed her gaze, and realised where they were.

Somehow, in the midst of Caleb’s pondering, they’d reached the very bottom of Tealeaf Hill.

Before them the mist swirled, slow and steady and certain. Caleb could feel Beauregard squeezing his hand, her grasp so tight that he thought he could feel his bones grinding together, but he didn’t say anything. He understood the fear going through her head. The mist had been unsettling and unnatural enough when they had both doubted the existence of spirits, clinging to the hill and obscuring the road from view like a burial shroud. Now, with the knowledge of those who lived beyond the veil, it was near impossible to look at the mist and not remember the stories that Caduceus had told.

_This will be alright_ , Caleb told himself. He took a breath, feeling the air settling in his lungs, and forced himself to calm. _This will be alright. I have done this before_.

_There is nothing to be afraid of_.

At his side, Caleb felt Beau shifting. “Are you- are you sure about this?” Beau asked without looking at him. “About the- I mean, it’s just mist, right? I know it’s just mist. It’s totally fine. This is- yeah. It’s fine. This is fine.” She swallowed, her hand flexing around Caleb’s again. “…But we could ask Caduceus for a ride,” she said suddenly, her words nearly tripping over each other in her hurry to get them out. “I’m not _afraid_ or anything, okay, just in case you’re thinking that or whatever, but it’s- I mean- mist can make things really slippery. And it’s a steep hill. I’m just saying that-”

“ _Beauregard_ ,” Caleb interrupted. “You wanted to do this, remember? You were the one who insisted that we go back to the house right now.”

“Well, yeah, I know, but- look, if Lucien’s coat is there then it’s been there for years, right? It’s not like it’s going anywhere on its own. There’s no rush, we can just, we can-”

“I don’t want to make Mollymauk wait.” The words left Caleb’s mouth almost without his minds permission, but they seemed to be the right thing to say. Immediately he felt Beauregard’s hand flex around his own, briefly tightening as she gave a short, sharp inhale. “I do not want to make him wait, and I don’t think you do, either. Am I right?”

“You…” Beau said, before trailing off into silence and shaking her head. “Yeah,” she murmured. “You’re- yeah. You’re right. He’s waited long enough. I’ve waited long enough. _Yasha’s_ waited long enough, and she only just got round to talking to us. I can’t- yeah. It’s just… it’s creepy. All the mist and stuff. It doesn’t feel right.”

Caleb gave a quiet hum. “I know what you mean,” he said quietly. “It feels a bit like you’re being watched, doesn’t it?”

“…Why the _fuck_ would you say that, Caleb?”

Caleb merely shrugged. “Because it’s the truth,” he said. “I don’t- there is no point in either of us pretending that the supernatural does not exist at this point, Beauregard. We’ve both encountered it. We’ve both seen it. Shying away from it won’t make it any better.” _Shying away from your feelings won’t make them any better either, Caleb_. “We should- we need to accept them. Accept _it_.”

“Alright, fine, I guess you have a point,” Beau muttered. “But that doesn’t mean you have to be all creepy about it, though. Maybe I just- maybe I just really don’t like the mist, alright? Maybe I just really don’t like not being able to see, or remembering all the shit that Cad’s told me about ghosts, or-”

“Beauregard,” Caleb said again, cutting her short. In the icy winter air his words hung in the space before him, lingering for all of a second before the mist stretched out and pulled them in to consume them. “Do you trust me?”

For a moment, there was only silence.

And then, in the quietest voice Caleb had ever heard from her: “…Yes.”

Caleb squeezed her hand. Already he could see the mist reaching out to greet them, swirling around their ankles and sighing against their legs, but he felt no fear. He knew who dwelled within the house at the top of the hill. He knew who walked the halls, and watched from the windows, and slipped from shadow to shadow as easily as breathing. He knew Mollymauk.

And Mollymauk knew him.

“Good,” Caleb said simply. Around his neck, Mollymauk’s scarf trapped warmth against his skin. “Are you ready to go?”

“…Yeah.”

“It will be fine, Beauregard. I promise. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Beauregard shifted. “I don’t like that you had to say that,” she muttered. “You know, normally when people say shit like ‘there’s nothing to be afraid of’ what they _actually_ mean is that there is _definitely_ something to be afraid of, but they don’t want you to be too afraid of it because otherwise-”

“ _Beauregard_.”

“…Sorry.”

“We need to do this. We can go and ask Caduceus if he will be able to drive us up if you would really like, but I think he may already be at the top of the hill himself. Either way, we _need_ to go up there. We need to check this.” Caleb swallowed. “We need to do this for Molly.”

“Yeah,” Beau said, her voice faint. “Yeah. For Molly. Just… if you get us lost and we die, I’m going to kill you, alright? Cad’s told me enough creepy stories about the mist here.”

“It’s alright,” Caleb said quietly, smiling just a little. “I won’t get us lost. I know the way.”

Beau exhaled. “You’d better.”

“I do.”

Caleb looked back towards the mist, watching it extending towards them, and smiled. Unafraid, with Beau by his side, he stepped back into the mist once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be posted on **November 25th!**


	16. Chapter 16

Within the mist all was quiet, but it was no longer a quiet that Caleb was afraid of. He breathed deeply as he stepped forwards with Beauregard at his side, feeling the chill touch of the mist gathering inside his lungs. The mist itself was as thick as it had always been, was as obscuring as it had ever been, and Caleb knew that, if he were not careful, it would be so, so easy to get turned around, and to lose both himself and Beau in the unending expanse of swirling white.

Caleb smiled to himself and, utterly unthinking and entirely trusting, shut his eyes.

“ _Hallo_ ,” he said quietly, hearing the mist steal his words away. “ _Hallo, Mollymauk. Es sind nur Beau und ich. Können du uns durchlassen? Wir müssen zum Haus gehen.”_

“What are you doing?” he heard Beau ask from beside him. “Are you- why did you say Molly’s name?”

Caleb didn’t open his eyes. “I’m letting him know that we’re here,” he replied. Against his jaw, above the fabric of Mollymauk’s scarf, he felt the mist touch in a gentle sigh. He smiled.

Beau shifted. “Why do you need to do that?”

“So that he knows to let us through.”

“Does that actually work?”

“ _Ja_.” At least, it had the first time Caleb had attempted it, and he trusted Mollymauk. He trusted that, if he asked Molly to let him through, if he proved to Molly that it was himself and trusted Molly to trust him, then he would be allowed through the mist that guarded the hill so closely. “Come on,” Caleb said. He opened his eyes, looking over at Beau, and gave her a small smile. “Let’s go.”

Beau frowned at him. “Are you- are you sure?”

“Yes.”

There was a brief pause.

Beau sighed. “Alright,” she replied. “Lead the way.”

Caleb did.

He walked forward into the mist without a moment’s hesitation, feeling Beau’s fingers tighten around his own before she too stepped forward and joined him in walking up the hill. The cobbles beneath his feet were as slick with damp as ever, the angle of the slope they were walking upon impossible to determine, and once again Caleb felt that fear twisting around his heart at the absolute lack of any distinguishing features. There was no indication of time, here in the mist. There was no indication of where they were, or of how far they had walked, or of what direction they were facing. A few times the fear spiked, some part of Caleb’s mind insisting that they’d been turned around, that they need to turn back now or risk becoming lost forever, but he ignored it as best he could, crushing the anxiety down into something small and brittle and weak. He was going to be fine. _They_ were going to be fine. Molly knew that they were here. Molly knew _them_. Molly knew them, and Molly trusted them, and they would get through the mist together.

Caleb wasn’t sure how long they walked like that, hand in hand along a mist-drowned, impossible path. He wasn’t sure for how long they felt the mist cling to their skin, for how long the world around them rested still and silent. He wasn’t sure how much time passed before they arrived at the top of the hill, stepping out of the swirling mist and into the embrace of the waiting, open gates. Caleb didn’t spot Caduceus’ cart when they arrived at the top of the hill, but he didn’t spend much time looking for it either. He only glanced around briefly as he uncurled his fingers from around Beauregard’s, trusting her to follow him as he started to make his way across the gravel and towards the house. It loomed above them, blotting out much of the hollow expanse of the winter sky, but its bulk no longer felt oppressive to Caleb. The sight of the empty, staring windows no longer made him want to shiver beneath the heavy weight of his coat. All they made him want to do now was pause for a moment, and check them in hope of catching a glimpse of purple.

He didn’t.

Without looking up, Caleb crossed to the house, striding up the steps to the front door with Beau following close behind him. He reached out, unlocking it quickly, and stepped inside.

“Come on,” he said, holding the door open for Beau before starting to head through the manor towards the office. “The photograph is in Gustav’s office, it’s just-”

“Yeah, I know where Gustav’s office is, Caleb,” Beau muttered, but she made no move to overtake him, instead trailing close behind him as he strode over the ringing marble tiles of the entrance hall. “I lived here for years, you know. I know- I bet I know this place way better than you do.”

“Almost certainly,” Caleb agreed immediately. From somewhere off in the house he heard a distant _meow_ , presumably as Frumpkin realised that he had returned, but he paid it no heed. He couldn’t think about Frumpkin right now. He could barely think about Beau. All that was in his mind now, blotting out just about every other thought, was the image of Lucien in his eye-button coat, staring out at Caleb from behind a single sheet of glass.

He wasted no time in reaching the office, walking swiftly along the corridors until he once again stood before the door leading to it. It swung open with a soft, groaning creak as Caleb pushed at it, granting him and Beau both access to the office. It was late afternoon now, and the setting sun cast light the colour of blood across the floor, staining the walls and floorboards with the spindly, skeletal shadows of branches. They seemed to reach for Caleb as he entered, shifting and swaying around his feet, but he ignored them.

Just across the room from him, exactly where he had left it, was the framed photograph of Gustav and his sons.

“Here,” Caleb said, not bothering to look behind him and check to see if Beau had followed him in as he crossed to the desk. “This is- this is it, do you see?” He leaned in closer, blotting out the light that had been creeping across the print to paint red across Mollymauk’s chest, and pointed at the buttons of Lucien’s coat. They were harder to see in the failing sunlight, the eyes still just as blurred as they had been before, but they were still just about visible. “Right here, on his coat. Do you- you see them, _ja_?”

For a moment, there was only silence.

“I see them,” Beau said, her voice soft as though she were speaking in a tomb and hoping to not disturb the dead. “Those are- yeah. I guess we should’ve brought Fjord with us to confirm it, but... fuck, man. Those are eye buttons. They match the description.”

“They do,” Caleb replied, just as quietly. “We should have Fjord confirm them at some point but… these are the buttons I thought of when he first mentioned them. I just hope that the coat matches his description of it, too.”

“I bet it does.”

“Mm.” Caleb leaned in a bit closer, lifting a hand to brush away the dust that clung to the glass. Beneath it Molly smiled out at the world, bright and vibrant and inexplicably alive in the still, unmoving photograph, and by his side stood Lucien. There was nothing in either of their postures to indicate rivalry beyond that which was normally found between siblings. There was no indication of hatred, or jealousy, or of any other unpleasant emotion.

There was no indication of the murder to come, and somehow that knowledge only served to make the photograph all the more chilling.

Caleb lifted his head, stepping back from the photograph, and the image of Lucien stared right back at him.

Beau didn’t move for a few moments longer, still peering at the buttons on Lucien’s coat. Caleb didn’t disturb her. He couldn’t. He was still looking at Lucien, at the expression on his face and how absolutely distinct he was from Mollymauk, despite the identical nature of their being. They were the same, were twins, were brothers born and raised together, and yet Caleb didn’t think he had ever seen two people look more dissimilar and different. They couldn’t be mistaken for each other. Perhaps that was his familiarity with Mollymauk speaking, though. Perhaps not everyone saw that. Perhaps, to everyone else, they were just twins, and the only way to distinguish them was through the peacock inked on Mollymauk’s cheek.

“Fuck,” Beau breathed softly. She stepped back from the photo, leaning against the desk, and Caleb blinked, his attention suddenly being pulled away from the photograph. “This is- _fuck_ , Caleb, this is all so messed up.” Beau lifted her hands, running them through her hair and tugging some strands free from the bun resting at the back of her head. “It’s all- it’s just- you know how long I’ve been trying to figure this out for, right? You _know_ that. You know that- that it’s been fuckin’ years, and that I _knew_ it wasn’t an accident right from the start, and that no one really believed me and that I didn’t have any proper proof to go on, and now all of a sudden we could actually find out _for real_ that it was- that Lucien did it.” She jerked her head up, staring Caleb dead in the eye hard enough to make him want to squirm. “You _get_ that, right? You get what this means. If we- if Lucien’s coat is here, if he hasn’t run off with it to wherever the fuck he is, then we have proof. We have _actual,_ real, legitimate _proof_ that we can show to someone. We could _solve this_.”

“We could,” Caleb said quietly, as something cold and uncomfortable gathered in his stomach. “We could- mm, _ja_ , we could solve this.” _We could solve this, and Lucien could be arrested. We could solve this, and Lucien could be in jail. We could solve this, and Lucien would be unable to receive his part of the will. We could solve this, and I would have to return to Rexxentrum._

_We could solve this, and I would have to leave Molly._

Unconsciously, Caleb raised one of his hands, brushing his fingers against the soft fabric of Molly’s scarf. He could still smell the lavender and incense and opium that clung to it, the scent as familiar to him as if he had known it his entire life. As if he had known Molly his entire life.

_I would have to leave Molly_ , he thought again, and behind his ribs he felt his heart squeeze so hard that it hurt.

“Caleb?” Beau said cautiously, and Caleb started a little, quickly dropping his hand and turning his gaze towards her.

“Hm?”

“Are you… are you alright?” Beau asked. “You’re- I don’t know, you went kinda weird and quiet and still. I thought you’d be excited about this.”

“I am excited about this,” Caleb heard himself reply. “I am- _ja,_ this is good. This is very good. We will be solving Mollymauk’s death, and that is- that is definitely a good thing.”

“…You don’t sound like you think that it’s a good thing.”

“You don’t either.”

Beau narrowed her eyes. “Don’t talk bullshit, Caleb. Why the fuck wouldn’t I want to solve Molly’s death?”

Caleb shrugged, slipping his hands inside his pockets. “I don’t know,” he said simply. “I do not- I do not know why you wouldn’t want to solve Molly’s death.” _I do not know why I wouldn’t want to solve Molly’s death._

Except, of course, that he did.

“…Come on,” Beau said after a pause. “Come on, Caleb, we’ve gotta- let’s go check Lucien’s room. I mean, Nott and I unlocked it, right? It’s- we might as well. While we’re here, I mean. We need to check if his coat is there.”

Caleb nodded. “ _Ja_ , I know.”

“…D’you want to…?”

“No, please. You lead the way. This was your house, after all.”

Beau gave a tiny smile at that. “Yeah,” she said quietly, turning to walk out of the office. “Yeah, it was.”

Together, they walked back through the empty, echoing house. Beau’s path was swift and sure, just as swift as Caleb’s had been, and she led the way to the staircase without hesitation, going up two stairs at a time. Caleb followed after her a little slower, glancing at the paintings and portraits that lined the staircase from the corner of his eye, until he too was on the floor above. Frumpkin joined them at the top of the stairs, melting out of the shadows and rubbing up against Caleb’s legs. His appearance would have been startling if Caleb wasn’t so accustomed to it, and he couldn’t deny that it was reassuring to have his cat so close to him as they walked past Mollymauk’s room and pushed open Lucien’s door.

The room beyond it looked almost surprisingly plain. It was similar to Mollymauk’s in size and layout, with similar items of furniture, but it lacked the now-faded bright colours and embellishments of Molly’s room, leaning more towards darker, richer tones of muted scarlet and dusty purple. It seemed sombre somehow, in a way that Molly’s room never had, the whole atmosphere of it darker and heavier. It took Caleb a few moments to gather the nerve to cross the threshold into the room, feeling the whole time as though the very air itself was being choked from his lungs. Perhaps it was the shadows that made him feel that way. The sun had almost entirely set now, sapping light and life from house and hill alike, and Lucien’s room was dark and gloomy, though still just about light enough to see by. It wouldn’t last long, though. Caleb knew that. In the winter months the sun set fast, and very soon Lucien’s room would be as dark as pitch, with only the moon to light it.

Somehow, Caleb suspected that the moonlight would do very little to bring light to the room. He took another step into the room, hearing the floorboards creaking softly beneath his feet, and quickly scanned it again. Just as he had expected, there was a large, ornate-looking wardrobe in one corner, the door firmly shut, as well as a desk and all the other expected bedroom furnishings. On Lucien’s bedside table, just as there was in Molly’s room, there was a candlestick. Caleb reached for it without thinking, lighting it with the matches he found by its base.

“There,” he said, straightening up with the candlestick in hand. “Now we have some- Beauregard?” Caleb turned. Beauregard was still standing just outside the door, an odd expression on her face. “…Beauregard?”

“I’m here,” Beau said. “I’m- just give me a fucking moment, alright? This is a bit weird for me, you know.”

“Why?”

Beau shrugged. “It just- it just is, alright?” She took a visible breath, steeling herself, and then stepped forwards into the room with a shiver. “ _Ugh_. Yeah. That was- look, I’m not like Jester or Clay or whatever. I don’t know what the fuck they mean when they talk about auras and vibes. But that, just then? That felt bad. This whole room feels weird. It doesn’t _feel_ right. You get that, don’t you? You get what I mean?”

Caleb nodded slowly, turning to look at the rest of the room. After so long living in the house on Tealeaf Hill he felt that he was accustomed to the sounds that it made, but somehow, in Lucien’s room, they felt… different. Against the panes of the window barren branches scraped and tapped, clawing gently against the glass like old, brittle fingernails, but the sound wasn’t the familiar one that Caleb so often fell asleep to. It sounded strange, odd and disjointed as though played on a metronome that hadn’t been wound properly. It sounded lonely.

Just for a moment, Caleb held his breath, straining his ears for a sound that he _knew_ should be there. He’d been hearing it for days now, the regular _tick-tocking_ of the grandfather clock at the end of the hallway as regular and reassuring as his own heartbeat.

It wasn’t there now.

By his feet, very quietly, Caleb heard Frumpkin hiss.

“Caleb?” Beau asked, and all of a sudden her voice sounded very small, and very quiet, and very, very uncertain. “Have you- the shadows-”

“What about them?”

“They’re- don’t laugh at me, alright, but I think they’re moving…”

Caleb lifted his head. In the light of his candleflame the shadows flickered and moved, shifting around him as though in some strange, impossible dance. Caleb knew that, had Beauregard said something like this but a week or so ago, he would have been quick to reassure her – and himself – that the shadows were only moving the way that shadows always did when a light source near them was shifted. He would have reassured her, and ignored the shadows, and ignored Frumpkin’s intermittent hissing, and ignored the prickles that swarmed across the back of his neck, racing over his skin and drawing his hair up into goosebumps. He would have ignored all of that.

He would have been foolish.

He wasn’t foolish now.

Caleb raised his candle slightly, carefully watching the light it cast across the walls. The shadows, already pooling at the bases of the walls as the last rays of dying sunlight slipped from the room, at first seemed perfectly ordinary, lying still and quiet exactly where they should, but something in their stillness made Caleb want to shiver. They were too still, somehow, at the same time that they weren’t still enough; there seemed to be motion waiting in them, coiled like a spring that was ready to snap at any moment.

Caleb lifted his candle a little higher, taking a step forwards, and this time the shadows _squirmed_.

There was no other way to describe what they did. They didn’t grow, didn’t rise up the walls before him or manifest into some being or entity, but they shifted at their edges, twisting within and without themselves as though trying to break free of the skin that the wallpaper formed. The longer Caleb watched the more they seemed to shift and squirm, writhing in a manner that made his skin crawl.

And then, suddenly and without warning, they started to flow down the walls, moving directly towards him.

“ _Shit_ ,” Beau said from behind him. Caleb took a hasty step back, nearly bumping into Beau, and turned around to see the shadows sliding out from beneath the bed, slipping across the floor and pushing up against the periphery of the candlelight. “This is- has this happened before?”

“Once,” Caleb said faintly. “It was- shortly after I arrived. It was just Mollymauk, though. That was- it was just him.”

Beau nodded, taking a visible breath. “And nothing bad happened to you, right? I mean, you’re here. You’re still alive and stuff.”

“Nothing bad happened,” Caleb confirmed, “not really. It was just… startling.”

“Good. That’s- cool, great, that’s good. That means we’re safe. This is just Molly, right?” Beau asked, raising her arms to hug herself tightly as, all around them, the shadows started to shift faster, leaking out from beneath the furniture and coiling down the walls like blood on blotting paper. “It’s- this is just Molly. It’s gotta just be Molly, we know that he’s here, yeah?”

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb echoed quietly.

“And there’s- you’ve not seen anyone else, right?”

“Right…”

“So it’s just Molly. It’s _gotta_ just be Molly, so we’re totally fine, it’s all good, he-”

“He can’t always see us,” Caleb murmured quietly. He took a half-step forwards, reaching out towards the wall, and watched as the shadows moved faster still, writhing at the periphery of the circle of illumination that the candle cast. “He cannot- Caduceus told me that sometimes spirits cannot always see into our world. What they see can be distorted, or warped.”

“Warped by what?” Beau asked tentatively, and Caleb shrugged.

“Many things, I think. What he’s expecting to see can perhaps affect it, I think. I’m not sure – Caduceus knows more than I do – but sometimes it can be hard for Molly to realise what’s going on, or to realise who he’s looking at if they are somewhere he associates with a particular person.”

“…You mean like-”

“Like Gustav’s office,” Caleb finished for her. “Like Lucien’s bedroom.”

“…Have you been in here before?” Beau asked, stepping closer to Caleb as the shadows drew nearer. “Caleb, have you been in this room? Because Nott and I haven’t. We unlocked it and that was it. Have you been in here? Has Molly seen you in here?”

Caleb shook his head. “ _Nein_. I have- I never wanted to. This room felt… off, somehow. I have seen Mollymauk almost everywhere in the house, but not… but not…” Caleb trailed off, swallowing. “Oh,” he said quietly. “Oh.”

“There’s someone else here,” Beau said faintly.

“You just said it was Molly-”

“Yeah, and I was _wrong_.”

Caleb shook his head. For reasons that he couldn’t hope to put into words he _knew_ that Beauregard was incorrect in her new assumption. The room felt wrong, felt strange and uncomfortable and the shadows were undeniably stretching out for them, the branches of the trees outside scraping and scratching against the windows as though clawing to be let in, but it didn’t feel new. It didn’t feel like someone else. “No,” he said. “No, Beauregard, I don’t think you-”

“You really think this is Molly? Really?”

“ _Yes_. I told you, this has happened before-”

“Well, yeah, but it shouldn’t be happening now,” Beau replied. “I mean, Molly knows you now, right? He spoke to you at Jester’s séance-thing, and you spoke to him on the way up, and even if he _didn’t_ know you then he should be able to recognise me.”

“That is true, but-”

“But that’s _not happening_ ,” Beau said pointedly. At the edge of the candelight the shadows writhed and twisted and Caleb could swear that, periodically, he saw them stretch forward just a little further, slipping between the flickers of the flame and moving closer to Beau and him by inches, tightening around their legs like a noose. “ _Listen_ to us, Caleb! We’re both talking and being kind of obvious about who we are, and we keep saying each other’s names, but _whatever the fuck this is_ isn’t recognising us! Molly was stupid and childish sometimes but he wasn’t dumb. If this was him he would have stopped by now.”

“So what do you recommend we do?”

“Leave,” Beau replied simply. She turned, gesturing to the creeping shadows around them. The room was almost entirely dark now, the last of the sunlight faded and gone, and the shadows looked as dark as pitch, taking and consuming the weak, paltry light of the candle wherever it touched them. “I’m not messing with any supernatural bullshit. These- these shadows don’t seem to like the candlelight much and the door is right there – we can get out, and leave whatever the fuck is in here alone, and we can come back tomorrow when it’s light and- _what the fuck was that?”_

Caleb flinched as Beau abruptly jerked backwards, lifting one foot up and staring down towards the ground. He followed her gaze, looking at the floor just in time to see the tendril of shadow return to the periphery of the candlelight, twisting in on itself until it melted in with all the others. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck, fuck, _Scheiße-”_

“That thing just fucking _grabbed_ me!” Beau said, and Caleb could hear the slight waver in her voice now, could hear it in his own voice. “It just- Caleb, it’s not safe here, we’ve gotta get out- _”_

Caleb shook his head. “ _No_ ,” he said. “We- we can’t- Molly- _”_

“Molly’s not here.”

“He is,” Caleb insisted. He lifted his head, staring out into the darkness as, down by his feet, he felt the shadows starting to shift again, drawing in closer as he raised the candle. “ _Mollymauk!”_ Caleb called, and immediately shivered. He could feel the shadows slipping around his ankles now, their touch cold and dry and as slick as oil. “ _Mollymauk!”_

“ _Caleb_ ,” Beau said, more urgently. “C’mon, dude, we’ve gotta get out of here, stop messing around, this isn’t Molly- _”_

“It _is_ ,” Caleb snapped. “It is, I know it is- _”_

“How can you possibly fucking know- _”_

“I _know him_ - _”_

“ _I do too!”_

With a loud, cracking shriek, the glass of the mirror shattered. A lightning-strike of lines bled across the surface, spiderwebbing from corner to corner and distorting the reflection into a hundred adjacent images.

In every single one of them, Caleb thought he caught a glimpse of purple.

“It’s not Molly!” Beau yelled. She flung a hand out in the direction of the mirror, pointing to it and the shattered glass now tumbling from the frame. The wind outside the house seemed to be picking up, moaning and crying against the stonework and stirring the branches of the trees to maintain their awful, scratching, scraping prying against the walls, but Caleb could barely hear anything past the sound of Beauregard’s voice. “Does that look like Molly to you? Does _any_ of this look like Molly to you? You don’t fucking know him like I do, Caleb! Don’t pull that shit with me!”

“It _is_ Molly!” Caleb insisted.

“ _How?_ Why would Molly do this?”

“To keep us safe! He is- he is trying to scare us off, to scare us away.”

“You said that he doesn’t know who we are-”

“He _doesn’t_ , but he doesn’t want to hurt us, either!” Caleb spun around, turning his back to Beauregard and looking instead towards the shadows that now clung to the walls, as thick as oil and as dark as pitch. “ _Mollymauk!”_ he said again. “Mollymauk, it’s us, it is just Caleb and Beau, it’s alright, it’s just us-”

“ _Caleb_ -”

“-there is no one else here, I promise you-”

“Caleb, whatever you’re trying to do, it isn’t working,” Beau said sharply. She reached out, grabbing for his shoulder, but Caleb shrugged her off. “This _isn’t Molly_ , or if it is, he _doesn’t recognise us_. We need to get out, _now_.”

“He _will_ recognise us,” Caleb insisted. He didn’t know where his blind, ridiculous, dangerous certainty was coming from but he couldn’t shake it from his bones. He _knew_ that this was Mollymauk, the same way that he knew the constellations of the sky. It was fact. It was truth. “Maybe- maybe if you speak more, or say things that you only really used to say to Molly, then he might recognise your voice and calm down. He knows you better than he knows me, after all.”

“You really think that’ll work? Because if this isn’t Molly then I don’t think that’ll go down particularly well.”

“Do you have any other ideas?”

For a moment, Beau just glared at him. “Fine,” she snapped eventually. “Fine, fine I’ll see what I can do. But if we die, I _swear_ that I’m going to come back and haunt you, alright?”

Caleb nodded. “ _Ja_ ,” he muttered. He didn’t have time to argue the illogicality of that statement. “ _Ja_ , great, fine, do that. Now just… try.”

There was a pause. Caleb could hear Beau breathing but he tried not to focus on her silence. He needed to think about what to say to Molly. He needed to figure out what to say to make Molly recognise him.

At his side, Beau cleared her throat. “Hey, asshole!” she yelled. “Molly, you purple fuck! Dumbass with the ombre dick! Stop fucking around, alright? It’s me, you monumental moron! It’s Beau!”

Despite himself, Caleb smiled a little at Beau’s words. He couldn’t tell if he was imagining it or not, but for a moment it seemed that the shadows paused in their movements, growing slower and stiller as Beau continued to rant in the flickering darkness. He cleared his own throat, quickly remembering the system he’d established with Mollymauk only that morning. He knew that he should try speaking Zemnian, knew that that had worked in the mist, but somehow it didn’t feel like it would work in this instance, where Molly had already made up his mind that they shouldn’t be here.

All the same, Caleb knew he had to try.

“Mollymauk!” he said, doing his best to keep his voice loud and clear. "Mollymauk! _Alles gut, es ist nur ich! Wir sind in Sicherheit. Es sind Caleb und Beau. Alles gut."_

_“Dickhead!”_ Beau yelled again. “If you keep fucking with us I’ll steal your favourite jacket! You’re too dead to stop me!”

“ _Alles gut_ ,” Caleb repeated, not looking at Beau. He couldn’t tell if his words were having any effect. He couldn’t tell if Mollymauk noticed them. He just needed- he needed- he needed to get Molly’s attention somehow, needed to say something to him or call him by a name that Molly would only ever have associated with him.

At the back of Caleb’s mind, in a memory made soft with quiet and comfort, something sparked.

What had he called him, that day when he’d been led to Molly’s photographs? He knew that he had called Mollymauk something, that something other than Molly’s name had fallen from his lips in the aftermath of- of everything. He _knew_ that in his blissful, unthinking state, he’d called Mollymauk something important. He knew that he’d called him-

“ _Liebling_ ,” Caleb breathed, and, immediately, the shadows lost the last of their movement. The branches beyond the window ceased tapping, the wind ceasing to shriek and cry around the outside of the house.

All there was, now, was silence, and the sound of Beauregard’s breathing.

Caleb swallowed.

“ _Liebling_ ,” he murmured again. He leaned forward, placing the candle to one side, and reached out into the shadows. They shifted again, slower than before and almost cautious, but after a moment they coiled up, reaching back towards him. Caleb smiled. “ _Liebling_ ,” he said, his voice a little louder now. “ _Meine Liebling, Mollymauk. Alles gut. Alles gut.”_

“Caleb?” Beau asked, her voice quiet and cautious. “What are you- what are you doing?”

“It’s alright,” Caleb murmured. “It- I think it worked.” He didn’t turn his head to look at her. He couldn’t. Before him the shadows moved like oil, writhing and twisting around themselves as they stretched out for him, still held at bay by the light of the candle, and Caleb couldn’t help but be transfixed by them. He knew them. He’d seen them before, all those days ago. He knew why the shadows were here.

He knew what Mollymauk was trying to do.

“It’s alright,” he said again, and whether he was speaking to Beauregard or to himself or to Mollymauk was a question that not even he could answer. “It is- this is all alright. We’re safe. I promise.”

“Caleb-”

“I promise.”

Against the palm of his hand, Caleb felt the faintest, chilling touch of a shadow. He turned his hand, moving it to lie palm-up, and watched as the shadow slowly, almost cautiously, slipped across his skin, weaving itself between his fingers.

He smiled.

Caleb stepped forward, leaving the circle of the candlelight entirely, and dropped to his knees before the wall, his hand now flat against it where the shadows still coiled as thick as night. “ _Alles gut_ ,” he murmured. He could feel the shadows against his palm, pressing up stronger against his skin and winding around his hand, and on some blind, unconscious impulse he shut his eyes, leaning forward to press his forehead to the wall. “ _Alles gut. Alles gut, Molly. Ich bin hier. Es ist nur ich. Es ist sicher. Alles gut, Liebling_.” Against his neck, Caleb felt the touch of something light and cold. It wasn’t a shadow.

_Sorry_ , he felt Mollymauk saying. Molly’s touch skimmed his neck again, pressing against his jaw and trailing down over his arm to tangle with the shadows that wound around Caleb’s hand. _Sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I couldn’t tell-_

“ _Alles gut,”_ Caleb said again. “It wasn’t- this is not your fault. We should have let you know. We should have-”

“Caleb? Who are you- are you talking to Molly?”

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb replied. He opened his eyes, glancing back over his shoulder, and met Beau’s gaze. Around his hand, he could still feel the shadows pressing and holding. “I am- _ja_ , that is exactly what I am doing.”

“Oh,” Beau said quietly. “Oh. Oh! Oh, fuck, it _did_ work!”

“It- _ja_ , I know, I just told you-”

“I _knew_ reminding Molly of his bullshittery would work!” Beau continued, her voice growing more excited as the truth of their safety became more apparent. “It fucking- _shit_ , Caleb!”

Caleb stood up slowly as Beau grinned at him, not yet removing his hand from the wall. The shadows were retreating now, settling and calming and slinking back to where they were supposed to be, but the ones around his hand seemed more stubborn, clinging to his skin as though loathe to let go. Caleb understood that. He felt the same way. Without stepping away from the wall he gestured over to the wardrobe, still waiting for them in the corner of the room. In the abandoned light of the candle it seemed to loom, crowding the corner of the room and taking up more space than it really should. Caleb cleared his throat. “Beauregard?” he asked quietly. “Would you- we still need to check for the coat.”

“Oh,” Beau said, her voice losing the excitement it had gathered and growing sombre once again. “Oh, yeah, we do.”

“Could you check? I am still- Molly-…”

“…Right,” Beau said slowly. “Yeah, sure, I can do that…” She narrowed her eyes, her gaze flitting from Caleb’s face to his hand, but she didn’t say anything. Caleb couldn’t imagine what she was thinking. He knew that she was perceptive, significantly more than he was, and between the séance and the mist and _this_ he couldn’t help but feel that the bond he’d formed with Mollymauk was more than apparent, especially to one of Molly’s best friends. Beau didn’t say anything, though. She just kept looking at him, reading _something_ in his body language, and then, right when the extended eye contact was starting to become painfully uncomfortable, she looked away. Slowly, her every movement careful and cautious, Beau crossed to the wardrobe and tugged on the door. It opened easily before her, giving no indication of ever having been locked, and with the same steady, slow movements, Beau reached in, starting to rifle through the clothing hanging inside it. Above the sound of gently rustling fabric, Caleb thought he could just about hear the sound of Beau breathing, as slow and as steady as a metronome.

“Got it,” Beau said quietly. She stepped back, tugging a long, dark coat off a clothes hanger as she did so. It was a fairly plain item, made of a dark wool, but it was well made and cut in such a way as to be almost deceptively stylish. Beau turned, holding it out towards Caleb, and in the light of the single candleflame, the eye buttons shone like embers.

Caleb took the coat. It felt heavier than he expected and he quickly laid it down on the floor, smoothing it out so that they could both get a good look at it as Beau kneeled down next to him.

“Do you think we should check the pockets?” she asked. “For- I dunno, for other clues? I mean, this is it. This is Lucien’s coat. But we might- there could be something useful in the pockets, maybe. I don’t know.”

“No, you’re right,” Caleb murmured. He reached out, running a hand across the fabric of the coat. “We should- mm. Anything might be useful.”

Beau nodded, reaching out to start checking through the pockets. Caleb ran his hand over the fabric again, absently wondering if Molly would have recognised the coat from Fjord’s descriptions. Perhaps he could have. Perhaps not. Perhaps Molly had his own suspicions of who killed him, had his own doubts about his brother. He’d clearly been agitated by Caleb and Beau entering Lucien’s bedroom and yet he’d said nothing at the séance, or in any of his communication with Caleb since. As far as Caleb had been able to tell, their rivalry had been nothing more than typical sibling bickering.

As far as Caleb had been able to tell, Mollymauk hadn’t been wary of his brother at all.

Perhaps he should have been.

Beneath his hand, Caleb felt something inside one of the coat’s pockets. With a frown he reached in, feeling paper beneath his fingertips, and quickly drew out the item he’d discovered. It was a scrap of paper, folded and unfolded countless times until it looked prone to disintegrate at a glance, but Caleb could still make out faded text upon the surface of it. From what he could tell, it seemed to be a receipt of some sort, to some bar or pub called Darktow which he didn’t recognise. He suspected that the bar wasn’t in Alfield – from what he’d seen at Uk’atoa’s Eye he couldn’t imagine that receipts were a particularly common item at the drinking establishments of Alfield, and he knew perfectly well just how fond Lucien was of travelling.

“Beauregard?” he asked, looking up and over at her. She was still looking at Lucien’s coat, checking through the inside pockets, and at the sound of Caleb’s voice she startled, jerking her head up and staring back at him.

“Hm?” she hummed. “What’s up?”

In response, Caleb merely raised the scrap of paper. “You said you knew the family. I don’t suppose you knew Lucien’s preferred drinking spots?”

“Wha- I mean, kinda,” Beau replied, frowning. She reached out, gesturing to be handed the piece of paper, and Caleb passed it to her wordlessly. “Show me, show me, c’mon…” She lifted the receipt, peering at it closely. For a few moments she was silent, her eyes narrowed as she read the printed text in the dim light, and then, quite abruptly, Caleb saw her face pale.

“Beauregard?” he asked quietly. Beau lowered her hand, placing the receipt down on top of the coat. “Are you… what is it?”

“So,” Beau said, and Caleb couldn’t tell if he was imagining it, but he thought her voice sounded slightly shaky. “So, I can tell you a couple of things about this receipt and the place it’s from. I don’t know how useful all of them will be, but… yeah. I recognise this place.”

“You do?” Caleb asked.

“Yeah.”

“Where- do you know where it is?”

“It’s in Rexxentrum,” Beau replied. “It’s a little- well, it’s a kind of shady place, actually. I went there a few times when I was staying with my parents again, just checking out rumour and getting my bearings and all that. It never hurts to know where the shady areas are in big cities, you know.”

“ _Ja_ , I know,” Caleb replied. “But normally you know where they are so that you can _avoid them_.”

“Yeah, well, not all of us are as… y’know… as you are,” Beau replied, waving a hand vaguely at Caleb.

“…What does that mean?”

“It means, well… y’know.”

“What does _y’know_ mean, Beauregard?”

“It means you’ll have got your head kicked in,” Beau blurted. “Alright? That’s what it means. It means that this bar, Darktow, was shady as fuck and you would have got your head kicked in, but I didn’t because I can actually handle myself in a fight. It was shady, and dodgy, and there were all manner of people you could hire for really not very nice jobs.”

In that moment, Caleb felt a chill run over his skin. “Like what?” he asked, though he felt he already knew the answers. “Like- what sort of jobs?”

“Hired thugs,” Beau replied, her voice quietening and losing some of its edge. “You could hire people to break in places, to scare people. Hired muscle.” She swallowed. “Hired killers.”

As one, they looked down to Lucien’s coat.

“Fuck,” Caleb breathed.

“Yeah,” Beau said numbly. “Fuck.”

“He- did he actually-”

“No idea. I mean, this receipt doesn’t say anything except that he was at this bar which is known to be super shady and dodgy and all that, but… I think so.” Beau pulled in a breath. Around the edges of the paper, Caleb could see it starting to tear beneath her grip. “I think- I think that Lucien went to Darktow on one of his fuckin’ business trips or whatever, and realised the kinds of asshole he could hire, and then when he decided to- when he decided to kill Molly for whatever fucking goddamn reason, he went back there, and he hired that asshole Lorenzo, and then Lorenzo- and then he-“ Beau swallowed. “It wasn’t Yasha’s fault,” Beau murmured to herself.

Caleb paused. “… _Was_?”

“It wasn’t Yasha’s fault,” Beau repeated. She lifted a hand, scrubbing it roughly over her face, and sniffed, just once. “It wasn’t- _fuck_ , Caleb, I’ve been so fucking _blind_.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been- I’ve- up until right now, I still kind of thought this was Yasha’s fault, you know,” Beau said, her words half-muffled by her hand. “Like, not seriously, I didn’t think she killed Molly or anything, but I- I’ve been blaming Yasha for so goddamn long. I’ve been- I don’t know, just, like, blaming her for letting Molly get killed. She was always the one looking out for us, you know? And I know that I was the one who actually threw the punches and shit but… Yasha kept Molly in check most of the time. She stopped shit like this from happening.”

“She kept you safe,” Caleb said quietly.

“Yeah,” Beau muttered. “She did. Or, she was meant to. She was meant to keep Molly safe when I couldn’t and she- she didn’t fucking do it the _one_ time when it really mattered. She let him die.”

“Beauregard, you know that’s not-”

“Yeah, I know that’s not fucking true! I know that Yasha didn’t have anything to do with it! But maybe I was fucking angry at losing my two best friends in one go and I needed someone to be fucking angry at!” Beau snapped. “Maybe I- maybe I was sick and tired of not having any fucking answers about who did it or _why_ , and no one gave a shit or wanted to help figure out why the freaky tiefling and the weird quiet orphan girl had died when it was _clearly_ just a drunken brawl, and maybe it was easier to just blame one of my best friends because I _knew_ that she couldn’t be angry at me for blaming her _because she was fucking dead!”_

In the dim, flickering light of the lone candle, Caleb thought he saw tears shining on Beau’s cheeks.

“Oh,” he said quietly. “Oh, Beauregard. I’m sorry.” He knew what this was. He’d encountered enough grieving friends and family members in his time to understand what Beau was going through. He’d _been_ the grieving family member, had experienced the grief and suffering and awful, aching loss that came with losing someone so close to you. He had experienced the numbness, and the denial, and the hoping and the praying and the fury, and he had seen it on so many people, so many times. He’d seen the passage of blame, pointed silently from person to person until it found somewhere to stick and fester.

He saw it in Beau now.

“Fuck,” Beau whispered. She twisted one hand in the fabric of Lucien’s coat, the other scrubbing at her face again. In the corners of the room, Caleb saw the shadows start to twist and stretch again, but he didn’t mention it. There was no malice in their actions, and when a single tendril of darkness snaked across Lucien’s coat, brushing up against Beau’s hand, Beau only flinched for a second before relaxing. She turned her hand silently, letting the darkness press against her palm, and, just for a moment, Caleb thought he saw her smile. “Hi, Molly,” she said quietly, her words little more than breath. “I’m sorry…”

For a few long, silent minutes they sat like that in the gloom and the darkness, Lucien’s coat between them as, beyond the window, the trees continued their lonely vigil atop the hill. Eventually Beau sniffed, breaking the silence, and gave a small cough before speaking up again. “…Caleb?”

Caleb hummed. “ _Ja?”_

“Would you- I’m going to apologise to Yasha, I think. Tomorrow. At her- at her grave down in the village,” Beau said. She didn’t look up, not meeting Caleb’s gaze, but she squeezed her hand around the darkness gathered in her palm. “You’ve been- you’ve done a lot, you know. I know I was a dick to you at the start, but you’ve… if you weren’t here, I don’t think I ever would have figured all this shit out about Lucien, and- and Lorenzo, and all that stuff. So… tomorrow, when I go visit Yasha, would you… would you and Jester come with me?”

Unthinking, Caleb reached out. He paused for a moment, waiting for Beau’s nod of permission before setting his hand down atop her own, trapping Molly’s darkness between their palms. He could feel the warmth of her skin, the coldness of Mollymauk’s shadows, and their contrast was familiar and heartbreaking all at once.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I would be honoured to.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art in this chapter was by [fswrites](https://twitter.com/fswrites)!
> 
> The next chapter will be posted on **December 2nd!**


	17. Chapter 17

It was cold at Yasha’s graveside. Frost crunched underfoot like shards of glass, the sound of every step hanging in the air around the gathered clusters of mourners. Caleb had known from what Beau said the previous day to expect to see Jester when he arrived at the small, silent cemetery some distance from the village, but he hadn’t been expecting to see Fjord and Nott too. They stood beside Jester just inside the gate, Beau standing in their midst, all of them looking towards one grave, a little distance off from the rest. Even if Caleb didn’t have the job that he did, even if he hadn’t seen many a grave in his time, he would have been able to recognise this one as being a little more recent than some of the others that slept further back in the graveyard. The stone was still dark, unmarred by the lichens and mosses that made their homes on so many markers, and the deep-cut words stood out starkly against the surface.

_Yasha Nydoorin._

_Beloved friend._

There was nothing else there beyond the dates of her birth and death. There was no mention of any family or partner, no mention of any relations she may have had, and as Caleb drew closer he could see that the ground before her grave was barren, with no flowers or candles or fluttering ribbons to bring life and remembrance to her last resting place. It looked lonely, bare and utterly devoid of life beneath the biting winter frost. There was no joy here. There was no softness.

Carefully, moving as quietly as he could across the grass, Caleb approached the others. He didn’t say anything as he joined them, not wanting to break the hollow, waiting silence, but he nodded to them in greeting, and a few of them nodded back. Beau didn’t, though. She was turned away from Caleb, facing towards the grave with Jester’s hand held tightly in her own. She didn’t seem to notice Caleb’s arrival, not outwardly at least, but barely a handful of seconds passed after he joined them all before Beau spoke up.

“I can’t put this off for any longer,” she said. “I can’t- I’ve gotta do this.” She paused, seeming to turn something over in her mind, and then added, even quieter, “Thank you all for being here, though. That’s- yeah. Thanks…”

“Of course,” Jester replied, squeezing Beau’s hand, and Beau gave a small smile. “I think this matters to all of us, you know.”

“It matters to me!” Nott piped up. “I want to find out what happened to Molly and Yasha!” Fjord elbowed her. “ _And_ ,” Nott continued, rubbing her side, “I’m very sorry that they’re both dead. Yasha was nice. I mean, Molly was an asshole, but Yasha was nice.”

“They were both good people,” Fjord agreed. “I’m sorry that you’ve had to go through this, Beau.”

Beau exhaled a sigh. “Yeah,” she muttered. “Yeah, me too.” There was a pause, broken only by the whispering yews, and then she shifted, stirring herself into motion. “I need to move on,” she said, in what was perhaps the smallest, quietest voice Caleb had ever heard from her. She looked down, her fingers tightening around Jester’s, and for a moment Caleb thought he saw her other hand move, just how it had when Molly’s shadow had reached out and taken it in the darkness of Lucien’s room. “I need to- I need to move on. I mean, it’s been _years_. That’s gotta mean something, right. It’s been- it’s been years, and I’m still fucking blaming Yasha for something that wasn’t her fault at all, and I can’t keep fuckin’ doing that! It’s not fair to her. It’s not fair to her memory.”

“It’s not fair to you,” Jester added quietly. There was no expectation in her voice, no hint of reprimand or disagreement or anything outside of quiet reassurance and comfort. Nott stepped up next to Beau, taking her other hand, and for a few long moments there was nothing but silence, broken only by the wind drifting through the yews, making them murmur and rustle. Distantly, Caleb heard the cawing of crows and jackdaws, heard their croaking call and the staccato laugh of the magpies, but somehow the sound of them didn’t infringe upon the stillness and silence. They didn’t feel like strangers. They felt like more mourners at Yasha’s grave, watching from a respectful distance as Beau gathered herself. After a minute or so she made a small motion, dropping Jester and Nott’s hands and stepping forwards.

“Alright,” she murmured. “I- alright.”

In silence, alone, Beau approached the grave. Every step that she made seemed louder than the last, shattering the frost-gilded grass beneath the sole of her boot until she was standing just before the barren, unadorned gravestone.

“Hi, Yasha.” Beau said quietly. She reached out, placing one hand on Yasha’s gravestone, and gently rubbed her thumb back and forth over the engraved text, the action as familiar and natural as if she’d been doing it for years. Perhaps she had. Perhaps, when Yasha had been alive, it had been a normal interaction between them. It seemed normal now, despite the strangeness of situation, with the memory of Yasha’s spirit speaking to them still hanging fresh and clear in Caleb’s mind. For a moment Beau just stood like that, silhouetted against the dull winter sky with her head bowed. In her hair, a single ribbon in grey and white fluttered in the wind. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. The breeze carried her words towards the others, every syllable as faint and intangible as mist but audible all the same. “I’m- I’m sorry for blaming you. I’m sorry for not trusting you. I’m sorry for getting mad, and getting pissed off, and telling myself that it was your fault that Molly died – that you _both_ died – when it- when it wasn’t. I _know_ that. I guess I always have. You wouldn’t have let Molly just die. You loved him as much as I did.” Beau sniffed, lifting one hand to brush it over her face, her other hand never leaving the dull grey stone. “I’m just- I’m really fuckin’ sorry, Yash. At least we kind of solved this though, right? I mean, I can’t bring you back, but I- I think I know who killed you. I think I know who killed Molly. And I know that it wasn’t your fault. I know that- that’s on me. I shouldn’t have been angry at you. You did everything you could. You didn’t know. _I_ didn’t know. But I do now, and I- yeah. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

Beau trailed off, lapsing into silence. Her thumb continued to rub over the stone, sweeping back and forth over the smooth surface of the headstone. Were it not for his perfect sense of time, Caleb thought he wouldn’t have been able to say for how long Beau stood like that, her head bowed above the grave of her best friend. Even as it was, he wasn’t entirely sure. Time didn’t seem entirely real there in the graveyard. Seconds limped by like hours, every whisper of the wind and murmur of the trees coming further and further apart until it felt as though the whole world was holding its breath, caught on the cusp on breathing again.

When Beau finally moved, Caleb felt the release in his lungs. She reached a hand into her pocket, leaning down to leave what looked like a handful of flowers crafted from scrap fabric at the base of Yasha’s grave before turning and quietly walking back to join the rest of them. In the faint breeze the flowers fluttered gently, their fabric and ribbon petals looking, if only for a moment, just like the real thing.

“Are you alright?” Jester asked quietly as Beau reached them. Beau nodded, not looking up to meet Jester’s curious, concerned gaze.

“Yeah,” she muttered. “Yeah, I’m- I’m fine. I needed to do this. I needed to- yeah. I needed to apologise. I needed Yasha to understand.”

“I’m sure she did, Beau. She sounds like she was a very good friend. She knows what you’re like.”

“Yeah,” Beau muttered again. “Yeah, she- she was.” She sniffled quietly. “Do you- do you think that we could… ah, nevermind…”

“Do what?”

“I was just, well… I dunno, I was wondering if you could try to contact her again? Like how you did that last time, just so that I can make sure for certain that she knows that I forgive her.”

Jester shrugged, pulling an uncertain face. “I mean, I could _try_ ,” she offered tentatively. “But… well, all my books have always said that ghosts are meant to move on after they’ve finished their business here, you know? Like, maybe they wanted to get revenge, or maybe they wanted to tell someone something, and once they’ve got their revenge or they’ve told that person whatever they wanted to tell them then they can move on and be at peace. I don’t know _why_ Yasha was a ghost, but…” She gave a small sigh, shrugging again. “Maybe this was it? Maybe- maybe Yasha was a ghost because you hadn’t forgiven her? And so now that you have she’s going to move on, and be at peace, and- and have a really nice time with M-Molly…” Jester sniffled, visibly welling up as she continued to speak. “And soon- and soon _Molly_ might be able to move on, too, and then they’ll both be happy ghosts t-together, doing happy ghost things, and they’ll- they’ll-…” Jester sniffed again, her bottom lip quivering.

Beau nodded slowly. “They’ll be gone,” she finished for Jester. Her words were flat, quiet and nearly inflectionless. “They’ll both be gone. Moved on. _Dead_.”

“I mean, they were already dead,” Nott pointed out, and somehow her words made Beau give a short, nearly humourless laugh.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I guess they were.”

“And you spent a long time not talking to them even when they were ghost-dead.”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“So, _really_ , if you think about it, it won’t be too different to how it was before Caleb came here. You’ll just have a little more closure, which is a good thing, right?”

Beau nodded again. “It is,” she agreed quietly. “It’s- yeah. It’s a good thing.” She sighed, reaching up to scratch at her undercut. “I mean, it’d be fucking great if we could figure out _why_ Lucien had Molly killed, that’d be fantastic, but- yeah, this’ll do. It’s better than nothing.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Caleb said quietly. He didn’t know where the certainty in his voice came from, but he didn’t try to hold it back. He _was_ going to find out what happened to Molly, and why, no matter how long it took. He needed to know. Beauregard needed to know. The mystery still itched at his mind like a splinter embedded below the skin; an irritant that he had no way to remove. “We’ll- _ja_ , we’ll figure it out. I know that we will.”

“Yeah,” Beau muttered. “Yeah…”

“Come on,” Jester said softly. She reached out, taking Beau’s hand without resistance, and started leading her over to the cemetery gate, towards the road that would take them back into the village. “Come on, Beau. Let’s- let’s go back. I mean, unless you want to stay here for a bit longer, which is totally fine, by the way-”

“No,” Beau said, shaking her head. “No, no, you’re right, we should- we should go. I mean, it’s pretty fucking cold out today. I don’t want you guys to catch a chill or whatever.”

Jester smiled. “It _is_ very cold,” she agreed, with a tone to her voice that suggested that she saw right past Beau’s words. She turned her head, looking over at the others. “Come on!” she called. “We’re going now!”

Caleb raised a hand. “Actually, would you wait just a little longer? I want to… I think I would like to visit Yasha as well. Just for a moment. I am- well, once this is all done, I will likely be going back to Rexxentrum, and I… _ja_ , I would like to pay my respects while I can.”

Beau shrugged. “Whatever,” she said. “I’m not going to stop you.”

“Thank you.”

In silence, Caleb approached the grave. He didn’t have as much to say to Yasha as Beauregard had, but something about her grave drew him to it all the same, luring him in until he was standing just before the slab of stone, all too aware that, somewhere beneath his feet, the bones of Yasha slumbered on. He couldn’t stop looking away from Yasha’s grave, from the fabric flowers gathered at the base of it or the deep shadows etched into the stone. He didn’t know what and he didn’t know why, but there was something in Yasha’s grave that called to him. It reminded him, oddly, of his first night at the house, when all had been darkness and shadow and this strange, looming sense of _waiting_ , like the pause before a clock tick that never came. He wanted to stay, wanted to see what would happen when the clock finally struck, but he couldn’t. He barely had any reason to wait by Yasha’s grave as it was. He hadn’t known her the way that Beau or Nott or Fjord had – hells, he hadn’t known her at all – but he felt close to her all the same. A few weeks ago he had never even heard of her, had barely heard of Alfield and certainly hadn’t believed in ghosts or spirits or anything of that nature, but now… now, he felt like he would carry the memory of Yasha and Molly in his heart forever. They mattered to him. He had never met them in the flesh, had never truly known them, and yet they mattered. Their memory mattered.

Mollymauk mattered, and just from that single, brief thought, Caleb felt his heart clench.

Molly. Gods, but how had so much happened in so little time? How had he gone from excusing away every strange action of the house to standing here, by the grave of someone who he’d never met with a mind full of thoughts of a dead tiefling who he could no longer deny his feelings for. He felt something for Mollymauk. He knew that he did. He liked Mollymauk, was fond of Mollymauk, liked talking to him and communicating with him in the strange, candle-and-shadow method that they’d established and he liked seeing Molly in his dreams that were no longer entirely his own. He liked _Molly_. He liked knowing him. He liked Molly being here, in whatever way that he was.

But Molly, like Yasha, couldn’t stay here forever, and Caleb knew that too. Yasha had, presumably, found her passage through the veil. Caleb wasn’t sure why, but he felt like he knew that, now. He could _feel_ it – the strange, unsettling feeling of a presence, one that he’d become so accustomed to that he barely even registered it, was gone now. A new feeling had taken its place, one that he couldn’t identify, but the sensation of something, of some _one_ lingering had faded. Yasha had faded. Yasha had moved on. Beau had settled whatever it was that was keeping her here, and in that forgiveness had set her free.

Perhaps something similar was what was keeping Molly here, he thought. They’d never truly established _why_ Molly was still here, living amongst the bones of the house and clinging to the shadows and the mirrors and the between-space of Caleb’s dreams. Perhaps Molly had some unfinished business, but if he had then he’d had plenty of chances to tell Caleb, or Jester, or Beau what it was, and yet he hadn’t. He hadn’t told them anything like that. He hadn’t told them of goals gone unfulfilled, or revenge that he was out to obtain, or anything at all. He was just existing, a shade lingering in the veil, seemingly not of his own accord. Perhaps, like with Yasha, it was the mystery of his own death that kept him half-tied to this world. Perhaps, like with Yasha, it was some external unfulfilled mystery that he needed closure for before he could move on.

Perhaps they would finally solve the mystery of Molly’s death once and for all, and Molly would move on for good. The thoughts were familiar ones to Caleb now, and Caleb hated them for that. He hated how they settled in his mind, overlaid with memories of speaking with Beau, of contemplating candleflames and shadow and reflections in glass, of seeing Molly and speaking to him and _being_ with him, in whatever strange, impossible way he could be. Molly’s murder was what was keeping him here. Molly’s murder was what had tied him to the house. Molly’s murder was what had brought Caleb here, and it was what was keeping him here, and it would be what freed him.

Caleb inhaled, and the scent of lavender and incense and opium settled in his lungs. He couldn’t stay here. He knew that. He couldn’t stay in Alfield. He couldn’t stay in the ancient, creaking house, hung about with memories that didn’t belong to him. At some point, whether he liked it or not, he would have to finish the job, and return to Rexxentrum, and leave every memory of Mollymauk behind him.

He _needed_ to leave Molly behind him, and with him every feeling that he had for the deceased tiefling.

Slowly, almost regretfully, Caleb turned on his heel. He crossed the short distance back to the others, joining them by the cemetery gates.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I was just- I was thinking about-… nevermind.”

“What were you thinking about?” Jester asked curiously, tilting her head slightly as she looked at him.

Caleb shrugged. “I-” he started, and immediately cut himself off. He couldn’t mention what he had been thinking about, not really. He couldn’t mention his thoughts that had been centred around Mollymauk. Those thoughts, awful as they were, were his alone. “I was just thinking that- I don’t know, I thought that we might see some evidence of Yasha moving on. If we could see her as a ghost then maybe we could see when she moved on, too.” He shrugged again, looking up at everyone. “It is absurd, I know, but… _ja_. I do not feel I can doubt the supernatural now, after all that has happened.”

“I don’t know if I would call it _absurd_ ,” Jester said. “Ghosts are _really_ different, you know! I mean, according to my books, some of them will do a final appearance before they move on, and some of them sort of fade slowly over time, and some of them go _extra_ weird and creepy if their thingy isn’t solved quickly enough! We could still see Yasha.”

“I don’t think we will,” Beau interrupted. She turned, starting to head towards the gate, and the others moved to follow her. “I mean, Yash was quiet enough in life. I can’t imagine that in death-”

From behind them there came a dull, tearing sound, like something ripping through heavy fabric. At first Caleb thought he had imagined it, the sound so out of place in a graveyard, but one look at Jester’s face was enough to tell him that he hadn’t. She turned her head slightly, looking back over her shoulder towards the grave they had just abandoned.

“Did any of you guys-” she started, and then Caleb watched as her whole face paled, her mouth dropping into a round ‘o’ of surprise and shock.

“Did any of us what?” Fjord asked, but Jester didn’t reply. She just shook her head, still staring at something behind them.

Caleb turned, and immediately saw what was holding Jester’s attention.

The ground before Yasha’s grave was disturbed. The grass that had covered it, sparkling with frost in the winter sunlight, had been torn open around a single point, the flowers resting against the stone knocked loose by the pale-skinned hand that now reached up from the earth. Slowly, like a tree sprouting from the earth, something – some _one_ – clawed their way up from the soil. At first all Caleb could see was a hand, the fingernails encrusted with dirt as it scratched at the frozen ground, but then it was followed by an arm, and then a shoulder.

By the time a head emerged from the ground, soil cascading from long, braided locks of black hair, the white tips now stained mud-brown, Caleb had no doubt in who he was looking at.

From beside him, he heard a gasp.

“Oh, my _gods_!” Jester said, her words almost unexpectedly quiet given the situation. “That’s- _oh my gods,_ Beau! That’s- _”_

“Yasha,” Beau breathed. “That’s Yasha, she’s- she’s- what the _fuck?!”_

“My sentiments exactly,” Fjord muttered, but Caleb barely heard him speak over the sudden sound of Beau’s footsteps as she rushed forward, sprinting full-pelt towards Yasha.

“Beau!” Nott yelled. “Beau, what are you doing? She could be evil! Or a- or a zombie!”

Beau didn’t reply. She didn’t say anything as she skidded to a stop beside Yasha’s grave, dropping to her knees without hesitation and reaching out to grab hold of Yasha’s hand. Without pause she started to pull, straining and groaning as, slowly, Yasha rose up out of the frozen, icy ground.

“ _Gods_ ,” Fjord muttered quietly, shock and awe evident in his voice.

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb murmured back. “That’s- _ja_.”

With one final heave, Yasha came free of the ground entirely. She stumbled to her feet, almost immediately losing her balance, but Beau’s arms darted out to catch her before she could fall. Despite everything, despite the years that had passed and the fact of her death, she looked… the only word for it was ‘alive.’ A flush stained her pale cheeks a soft pink, and even from where he stood Caleb could see the brightness in her eyes, the way her gaze darted across the landscape as though drinking it all in. She was dressed, Caleb noticed absently, in a surprisingly beautiful flowing dress in a soft cream now stained with earth, with small flowers embroidered all over it. It looked like it had been adorned with lace once upon a time, but what lace had existed had either been destroyed by time or shredded by the earth as Yasha left it, leaving little more than fluttering scraps of gossamer clinging to the fabric.

“Yasha,” Beau breathed. Yasha turned her head, her chest heaving as she caught her breath, and gave Beau the smallest, softest smile that Caleb had ever seen.

“Hi, Beau,” she replied. “It’s good to see you again.”

Beau swallowed. “I-” she started, and then she quickly shook her head, looking over towards the others. “Jester!” she shouted. “Can I- can Yasha come back to yours? You’re nearest and Yasha’s fucking freezing!”

“Oh my gods, of course!” Jester ran over to them, quickly ducking under Yasha’s other arm to help support her weight. “Nott, can you open the gate for us-”

“I’m on it, I’m on it,” Nott grumbled, but she still very nearly ran towards the gate, wrenching it open for them.

The journey back to Jester’s flat was a swift one, all of them travelling at a speed closer to a jog than a walk as they hurried Yasha along the lanes and streets. Her gait was awkward at first, slow and stumbling as though she was learning how to move all over again, but soon she seemed to find her feet, though the shivering didn’t stop until they were inside Jester’s flat with a fire starting to roar in the grate, one of Jester’s large, fluffy blankets around Yasha’s shoulders and a mug of tea between her hands. Beau was quick to take a seat at the table next to Yasha, close enough to touch but not doing it quite yet. She seemed wary, almost, caught on the knife-edge between fear and delight, her entire body practically thrumming with tension. It was only when Yasha turned her head to smile at Beau, colour finally returning to her cheeks, that Caleb saw some of that tension start to melt away. She didn’t speak, though. No one in the room was speaking. Nott and Fjord were waiting awkwardly by the door, apparently unsure of how exactly they fitted to the new dynamic that the day had taken on, and Jester was just watching in absolute silence as Beau continued to stare mutely at Yasha. If conversation was going to happen, it seemed that Caleb would need to be the one to initiate it.

That was alright, though. He had plenty of questions to ask.

“How did this happen?” Caleb asked without preamble, sitting down across the table from Yasha. He felt that it would be a good question to start with – he was sure that the others were all thinking something similar, and from Fjord’s nod and Nott’s approving look he assumed that he was right. “How did- how are you- how did this happen?”

_How did you come back?_ he wanted to ask. _How did you do it? How did you make it happen?_ Did _you make it happen? Can we make it happen again?_

_Can Mollymauk come back, too?_

He wanted to ask all of that, and he didn’t. He couldn’t imagine that he was the only person thinking it, not with how close Molly and Beauregard had been, but all the same the questions seemed… wrong, like they were in some way detracting from Yasha’s return. That was the priority here, and he knew it. Yasha was the priority. Not Mollymauk. Not now.

Before him, Yasha didn’t seem to react immediately. She continued to stare into her mug, watching the steam that twisted and rose above it, and after a few long seconds of silence Caleb turned his gaze to Jester instead. If anyone would know why and how someone could returned from the dead, he felt, it would be Jester.

It seemed Beauregard was thinking along similar lines. She reached out, gently grabbing Jester’s hand. “Jester? Do you- have you got any ideas?”

“I don’t know!” Jester said. “I don’t know! I’ve not read about _anything_ like this! Like, not _ever_! Ghosts don’t just come back as people, that’s _stupid,_ their body would be all gross and disgusting and, y’know, all falling apart and super-creepy but Yasha’s _isn’t_ and she seems _fine_ and I don’t know how this could happen! I didn’t know that it _could_ happen! But maybe- I don’t know, maybe Yasha knows more? I mean, she’s the one who’s somehow _alive_ again now!”

As one, they all turned to Yasha. Yasha looked back at them, her eyes wide, and then pulled an apologetic face as she gave a small shrug.

“I don’t know either,” Yasha said quietly. Her voice was soft, just as quiet and gentle as it had been during her séance, but it felt louder, somehow, without any discernible increase in volume. She sounded present, in more than just body. She cleared her throat, reaching for her mug of tea, and took a sip before continuing. “I don’t- I don’t know. I don’t know what happened to me. I don’t know why I came back, or why I woke up, or any of that. I don’t know…”

“But you’re back, right?” Beau said. “I mean, you’re not just- you’re not some super-solid ghost? You’re actually back? You’re _alive_?”

Yasha nodded slowly. “I think so,” she replied. “I- I can _feel_ things. I could feel the cold outside, and I think I can feel my heart beating. I can feel this tea, too.” She looked up at Jester, giving her a small, almost tentative smile. “Thank you for that, by the way. It was very kind of you. Thank you for the blanket as well.”

Jester flapped a hand. “No need to thank me for it! You looked like you were going to pass out from the cold or something.”

“I felt a little like I was going to pass out.”

“But not now, right?” Beau asked quickly. “You feel- you feel alright? You feel- I mean, you just said that you think you’re alive, I know that, but you- you feel okay? You feel- you’re not hurt? You’re not in pain?”

Yasha shook her head. The action made her braids shift, and for the first time since she’d tugged herself free from the soil Caleb saw the tiny beads and ribbons woven through them, sparkling and shining in the sunlight. “I’m not in pain,” she confirmed quietly. “I’m a little bit sore, but it’s not too bad. It just feels like I did a little bit too much work yesterday, that’s all. Even though I- well, I mean, even though that I was… that I was dead yesterday. It’s been a while since I did anything at all, actually…”

“Yeah,” Beau said, her voice little more than a whisper. “Yeah, it’s… it’s been a while. You’ve- do you know how long it’s been, actually?”

“Not really. I know that time’s passed but it’s kind of unclear how much.”

“Do you remember being a ghost?” Jester asked. Yasha raised her head, looking over at her, and once again Caleb was struck by just how _real_ she was. He knew that it was an obvious thing to think, knew that Yasha was real and physically here, whereas in the séance she had been little more than a shimmering immaterial form, but he couldn’t get past it. She was _here_. She was sitting here in Jester’s flat, her arms resting on the wood of Jester’s table and her hands wrapped around the glass of water, and her shoulders and chest moved with each breath, and her hair shifted as she turned her head, and she was _alive_. She was alive, and she was there, and she was present, and Caleb had no idea how.

Slowly, Yasha nodded. “I remember,” she said. “It feels… fuzzy, though. Kind of like remembering things that happened when you were drunk. I know that it happened, but it all feels… off.”

“You said that was what it was like for you to think about living memories as a ghost!” Jester interjected, and Yasha gave a small smile.

“Ah, yeah, I suppose I did say that,” she agreed. “This time, though, I actually know what happened, which is nice. When I was a, um, a ghost, I suppose, it was all a little bit unclear. I never knew if what I was saying was actually what definitely happened or not. It was like there… I can’t really describe it, but it sort of felt like there was a fog over everything. I couldn’t even really see you until you contacted me especially, Jester.”

“Did you see me?” Beau asked quietly. “During the- do you remember seeing me?”

“Yeah,” Yasha said. She loosened one hand from around the mug, reaching across the table to Beau, and Beau took her hand without hesitation. “I saw you then, Beau. That was- it was really nice. It was really nice. I hadn’t seen you in so long.”

“I hadn’t seen you in years,” Beau replied. At the corners of her eyes, Caleb could see tears starting to gather like stars. “I hadn’t- fuck, Yasha, it’s been so long.”

“It has.”

“And you’re _back_.”

“I mean, it does seem that way.”

Beau gave a short, damp laugh. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, it really does. Just- don’t go dying on me again any time soon, alright? I can’t- I’m not putting up with that shit. Not again.”

“I won’t,” Yasha promised immediately, her hand tightening around Beau’s. “I- I won’t. Not if I can help it.”

Beau laughed again, but the sound quickly faded as she gave a soft sigh. “Yash… Do you… can I ask you some questions?”

“Of course you can, Beau.”

“Can you remember what happened before you- before you became a ghost?” Beau asked. Her tone was still soft, quiet and cautious and careful, but beneath her words Caleb could hear the urgency and the concern and the confusion, and he knew that Yasha could hear it too. She smiled at Beau, the expression soft and achingly fond, and Beau’s expression lost some of the uncertain edges it had been carrying.

“I can,” she said. “I- yeah, I think I can remember it.”

“Do you- I’m really sorry I’m asking this, Yash-”

“No, no, it’s alright, I know you have questions-”

“-this is such a shit question, though-”

“Just ask it, Beau.”

“ _Do you remember how you died?”_ Beau blurted out all in one go. “You don’t- you don’t have to tell us all of it. We know- we know that it was Lorenzo who killed you, and we’re pretty fucking certain that Lucien paid him to do it, but do you- do you have anything else? Any more evidence? Anything-”

“Yes,” Yasha interrupted. “I- yes. I think I do.”

“What do you remember? You don’t have to tell us-”

“It’s alright, Beau, really. I’ve- you know, somehow, being a ghost makes it easier to accept that you- that you died for a while. I can talk about this. It’s okay.”

Beau’s face crumpled slightly. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable…”

“I’m not,” Yasha assured her. “Really. I’m not. This is alright. I mean, it’s not a lot of fun to think about it, but I can- I can do it. Especially if it’ll help Molly.” She paused, and then added, “Did you want to hear what I can remember _now_?”

“…Please.”

“Alright. Well, you said that you know who killed me, and I don’t really- I mean, it all happened very quickly, but…” Yasha trailed off, frowning to herself. “Before he killed me, he _did_ say something?”

Jester gasped. The sound of it made Caleb jump a little, having been so focused on Yasha and Beau’s conversation that he’d very nearly forgotten that there were other people in the room with them. “Ooh, what?” she asked. “What did he say? Was it- was it some dark secret? Was he sorry or something? What did he _say_?”

“Oh, nothing like any of that,” Yasha replied, shaking her head slightly. “It was just… well, just before he killed me, he said- I don’t know, it still doesn’t make a lot of sense, but he said something like ‘that purple bastard better get famous for this.’”

“…What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Beau asked. “What the- what- was he talking about _Molly?”_

Yasha shrugged. “I don’t know. He just- that was what he said.”

“Why the fuck would he be talking about Molly? Unless he was talking about Lucien, which makes even less sense-”

“I know, it doesn’t make any sense at all, it doesn’t-”

“Oh,” Caleb said quietly as Beau and Yasha continued to speak back and forth. At the back of his mind he could feel something shifting, thoughts and notes and snippets that he’d read rippling back and forth until his whole mind felt as though it were thrumming with them, balanced right on the precipice of understanding.

He blinked, and behind his eyes, details fell into place like puzzle pieces.

“Oh,” he said again. “Oh, _Scheiße_.”

“Caleb?” Jester asked. “Are you okay?”

Caleb nodded absently. “I’m okay,” he said. He didn’t know how to describe what he was seeing, what he was thinking. There had been so many small things, spread out across days and weeks, broken up through letters and conversations, and, all of a sudden, he felt as though he was watching them converge into one unbroken, unblemished whole. “I’m okay, I am just… I think…”

“What?”

“I think I know why Lucien had Molly killed.”

In the void following his words, the silence in the room was absolute.

Beau was the first to speak up. “You think you _what?”_ she asked, her words as cold and as dangerous as a scalpel. Caleb cleared his throat, not looking at her. Looking at her felt like it would threaten to burst the impossible, intangible bubble that his thoughts were drifting in, scattering them to the winds until the whole situation was lost once again.

“I think I know why Lucien had Molly killed,” he repeated. “I think- I think I understand it now. I think I know.”

“What do you think happened?” Jester asked quietly.

“I think,” Caleb replied, “that it was a business decision.”

There was a pause.

“It was a _what?”_ Beau asked abruptly. “A fucking- a _what?”_

Caleb shook his head. “That was the wrong word for it,” he muttered. “I think it was a… look, just listen, okay? I think… I have not been here for very long, and I know that, but I think I understand what kind of a person Mollymauk was. A brother such as Mollymauk was when he was alive could shine a bad light on any business. Family names are important – you know this, Beauregard, better than I do – and in allowing them to keep their own surnames, Gustav equally well allowed them to forge their own reputation. Perhaps he thought this was a, a _good_ thing, as his own name had associations with circuses and other, um, less well-regarded ventures, but having a name free of connotation is a dangerous thing in its own right. He gave them their birthnames, and gave them the ability to hang themselves by them.”

“What are you saying?” Beau asked quietly. Caleb could see her grip on the table, her hand white-knuckled around the wood. “What are you- what are you saying, Caleb?”

“I’m saying,” Caleb continued, “that Mollymauk was a spot on a name that Lucien wanted to make great. All of his trips to Rexxentrum, and Zadash, and even across to Emon in Tal’Dorei… he was seeking to grow his own business, a business in his own name. I found- when I was at the house, soon after I arrived, I found correspondence between Gustav and the Lords Pumat about Lucien possibly visiting them for a while, learning about their trade and being introduced to others in those sort of circles. For a young individual, just starting to join those circles, making a name for yourself is very important. It is how people come to know you. It is how they- it is how they will recognise you and your work. That’s why there’s all that talk about first impressions, and all that sort of thing. They matter – Beauregard, I’m sure you understand – but what also matters is who else shares your name, and how they can… affect it.”

From beside him, he heard Beau inhale sharply. “Oh,” she said. “ _Fuck_. Molly.”

“Molly,” Caleb agreed.

“D’you really think people would’ve- I mean, even in Rexxentrum- _shit_.”

“Even in Rexxentrum,” Caleb said quietly. “Molly had quite the reputation back here, and word spreads, especially if people are looking for information on a new business partner. A living brother with a reputation like that would garner only disdain. He would be a blight on Lucien’s name, and from what I have gathered it seems that Lucien was, ah, rather proud, I suppose. Being associated with a person such as Mollymauk would not have looked good. If he were meeting people for business and the first thing that they thought of when they heard his name was a- a handsome, flirtatious, wild, rebellious tattooed tiefling who they’d only heard stories of, that would turn the entire meeting sour. Perhaps if they looked different he could have claimed that Molly was no relation to him, but they- they were twins. He _couldn’t._ Alive, Mollymauk would only tarnish his name.” Caleb swallowed. He could feel the weight of Yasha’s eyes on him, could feel Beau’s gaze burning into the side of his head, could feel Jester watching him from across the table and could feel Nott and Fjord watching from beside the door. The entire room was silent, the air still and unmoving as though waiting within a tomb.

Carefully, slowly, Caleb took a breath. In his lungs, the air tasted like gravedirt and decay.

“A living brother would only garner filth for his name,” Caleb said quietly. “A dead brother, however… that would garner pity.”

“I’m going to kill him,” Beau said, her voice as soft as silk. “I’m going to- I’m going to find Lucien, and I’m going to fucking kill him.”

“I don’t think you’ll be alone in that,” Fjord muttered. “Although- I’m sorry, but are you really saying that Lucien killed his brother just to create a sympathetic reputation for himself?”

Caleb gave a small shrug. “I think so. I- from what I’ve gathered, their relationship started to fall apart in later years as Mollymauk became more… well, more Mollymauk-ish, I suppose. Lucien had been learning business, extending his network, and I cannot speak from experience, of course, but it’s my understanding that he was a, ah, strategically minded individual?”

“He was a cold son of a bitch, if that’s what you mean,” Beau muttered. “Not- I mean, he wasn’t a _dick,_ not like Molly could be, but he was fucking savage sometimes. But, like, carefully savage, you know? He was smart about it.”

“He was smart enough not to kill his brother himself,” Caleb continued. “He was smart enough to get someone else to do the job for him. Someone from out of town, with no apparent connections to anyone in Alfield, who could get it done quickly with a good cover and then leave.”

Beau exhaled. “And then he got the fucking coroner’s report doctored. Made it so that anyone who did try to look into it would have a hard enough time even pinning it on Lorenzo.”

“He comes from money,” Caleb mentioned. “Many people can be bought.”

“What about the will, though?” Jester piped up suddenly. “Wouldn’t- if Molly died, wouldn’t Lucien get the house, too? Do you think that could have been part of it?”

Caleb shrugged. “Possibly. Lucien getting the house would depend on whether Gustav chose to update the will or not. I can’t imagine that Lucien didn’t consider it, though. He strikes me as a very… cunning individual.”

“He was,” Yasha added. “He liked to, um… he liked to plan things. He was very organised. He knew about what was in the will before Molly did, too. I think Gustav told him at some point. I overheard them one day when I was visiting Molly, but he was still asleep when I got there. I think I…” She trailed off for a moment, her brow furrowing as she tried to recall the memory. “I think I heard him talking to Gustav about the will… he didn’t sound very happy about it, though I didn’t know why. I didn’t stick around for listen for long, though. I didn’t want- I didn’t want to risk running into Lucien.”

“Lucien didn’t _need_ the house, though,” Beau pointed out. “I mean, Yasha, come on, he was never fucking _there_. He was always fucking off to Rexxentrum or whatever, being all fancy and asshole-ish and doing his business bullshit. Why the fuck would he want the house?”

“So that Molly couldn’t have it?” Yasha suggested. “You know Molly wasn’t the tidiest or most organised person - maybe Lucien thought that if he had the house then he would ruin it?”

“Maybe…” Beau said dubiously, before sharply shaking her head. “Doesn’t fucking matter though. It doesn’t- so Molly was going to get the house, so _what_? Lucien wouldn’t have had him killed for that alone.”

“Maybe not, but it may have added to his motivation,” Yasha replied. “You’re right, though. It doesn’t- it doesn’t really matter exactly why Lucien killed- why he killed Molly, does it? We know that he did it. The outcome is the same either way.”

“Yeah,” Beau said. She looked down at the table where her fingers tangled with Yasha’s, squeezing ever so slightly as though she was checking to make sure that Yasha was real. “Yeah,” she said again, and her voice was softer this time, an echo of what her anger had been masking for so long. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t- it doesn’t matter. He’s dead. Lucien did it. End of story.”

No one spoke in the silence that followed Beau’s words. The air in the room felt strange, heavy with loss and light with relief and wonder at Yasha’s return all at once, as though no one could quite figure out how they were supposed to feel. There was too much going on, too many conflicting thoughts and conflicting feelings and even now, so soon after quite literally watching someone rise from their grave, Caleb couldn’t keep thoughts of Mollymauk from his mind. He ducked his head, pressing his nose to the soft fabric of Molly’s scarf, and breathed in, letting the scent of it settle in his lungs like an embrace. He didn’t want to forget Molly. Awful as it had been, uncovering the details of his death and the plot of his murder, it had kept Caleb in Alfield, had kept him at the house and in Mollymauk’s bedroom and it had kept him close to _Molly_ , in memory and in spirit both. He knew that he wouldn’t forget Mollymauk, knew that he _couldn’t_ forget Mollymauk, but he didn’t want to leave him. He didn’t want to leave Beau, or Yasha, or Caduceus, or anyone that he’d met here. He was glad that they knew now what had happened to Molly, but he didn’t want it to end. He didn’t want to leave.

_End of story_ , Beau had said. Caleb blinked, and felt something damp come away on his lashes. _End of story_.

It felt like it, and he hated that for what it was.

“Fuck,” Beau said softly out of the silence. “I- fuck. Gods. This is- what do we even _do_ now?”

“What do you mean?” Fjord asked.

“I mean, what the fuck do we _do_? We’ve- I’ve been trying to figure this out for so long, Fjord, and now we just- now we just _know_. We could tell someone about it but we don’t even know where Lucien is now, and Molly’s still fucking dead, and pinning it on Lucien isn’t going to fucking _do_ anything and we- we need to-”

“We need to let Mollymauk move on,” Caleb said quietly, ever word feeling as heavy as granite on his tongue. “We need to- we need to let him go, like you did today with Yasha, Beau. We need to go to his grave, and we need to- we need to say goodbye to him. We need to bring him closure on this.”

He didn’t mention the possibility of Molly coming back. He didn’t feel like he needed to. He could see on Beau’s face that she was thinking about the same thing that he was, and he didn’t feel that mentioning it aloud would help. It was better, in his mind, to keep it as a silent, unspoken hope. They didn’t know how it worked. They didn’t know why Yasha had returned. They didn’t know what had caused it, or how to make it happen again, or even if it _could_ happen again, and to expect it and prepare for it and speak of it happening only for it not to…

Caleb shut his eyes for a moment, drawing in a slow breath. He couldn’t- he couldn’t. He couldn’t let himself think about that. This was better. He knew that. It was better to tell himself that Molly wouldn’t return the way that Yasha had. It was better to tell himself that Molly _couldn’t_ return. It was better to tell himself that they would go to his grave, and say their goodbyes, and then Molly would be at peace and Caleb would finish his job and return to Rexxentrum, where no ghosts dwelled to walk his dreams. It was better to tell himself that. It was better to accept that.

It was better to say goodbye to Molly now, in his own time, and hide whatever hopes he may have to dull the longing that he knew could cut him so deeply.

“… I’m going to go back to the house,” Caleb heard himself muttering. He opened his eyes, glancing around at the others, but none of them said anything. Even Beau only nodded understandingly.

“Alright,” she said quietly. “Do you want to… when do you want us to- when do you want us to say goodbye to Molly?”

“Tomorrow,” Caleb said. “Um. In the afternoon, I think. Caduceus can bring you up to the house. I will- _ja_. I will meet you then.”

“Do you want Fjord and I to come?” Nott asked.

Caleb shrugged. “I don’t see why not. You both knew Mollymauk better than I did.” He couldn’t stop himself from glancing over at Beau as he spoke. Her eyes narrowed slightly when the words left him but she didn’t speak up, and he was silently grateful for that. Now was not the time to discuss exactly how well he knew Mollymauk. Now was not the time to dwell on it.

Very soon, there would be no reason to dwell on it at all.

Caleb rose from the table, making his way over to the door. “I will- I will see you then,” he said again, hearing himself speaking as though at great distance. Had he been less lost in his thoughts he was sure he would have been grateful for his upbringing and how unconsciously it allowed him to handle the pleasantries of parting ways and leaving Jester’s flat and shop, but he wasn’t. With every second that passed, the door shutting behind him and the cold winter air embracing him once again, he felt his thoughts turning more and more towards the tiefling who had so closely interwoven himself with Caleb’s own life.

What a dull, bitter irony that was. What a dull, bitter irony it was that it was only in Mollymauk’s own death that he had come to mean so much in Caleb’s life. How awful it was that the very resolution of Molly’s death, that the closing of his chapter, the thing that had kept Caleb so close to him for so long, would be what would send him away, back to his life of wills and paperwork and other cities, full of life and free of spirits.

If he had been told but a month ago that he could return to Rexxentrum, that he could finish executing this strange will and go home to the city that he’d lived in for so long, he would have jumped at the chance. Now, it only felt like a punishment.

Now, it only felt like exile.

Alone, with thoughts full of ghosts and longing, Caleb returned to Mollymauk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be posted on **December 9th!**  
>  Also, for those who want to skip such scenes, please be aware that the next chapter will feature an explicit scene.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please be aware that the following chapter includes smut after the scene break (indicated by '---')

Caleb’s feet led him to the base of Tealeaf Hill. There was no conscious thought that guided their steps, no input on the behalf of his thinking brain that made him skirt Caduceus’ house and any offer of a potential ride to the top of the hill. Instead, his feet carried him, unthinking, to where the mist hung and gathered, the veils of it moving and breathing like the lungs of the hill itself. Caleb barely even registered when he stepped into it, all the world falling silent around him and all sight becoming faded and dull, made unreal by the presence of the mist. It was quiet within the mist, peaceful and still and entirely isolated from the world outside. Here, in the mist, there was no sound. There was no conversation. There was no Beau, and there was no Jester, and there was no Yasha and her impossible, incredible return. There was no discussion of death, or of murder. There was no discussion about whether Molly, too, would be able to return.

Within the cage of his ribs, Caleb felt his heart twist. He blinked, clearing gathering teardrops from his lashes, and shook himself slightly, desperately trying to pull his thoughts back onto a more rational track. He shouldn’t be feeling what he was feeling. There was no reason at all for him to be feeling what he was. He didn’t _know_ Molly, not really. He’d never spoken to him outside of dreams, had only been at the house for a number of weeks, and what conversations he _had_ had with the spirit had been limited almost to the point of non-existence. He’d learned to communicate with him, yes, and he’d found himself growing fond of Mollymauk’s soft touches and teasing interactions, and there was no point in denying his attraction to the man, but he wasn’t- he couldn’t-

He couldn’t let himself feel anything for Mollymauk beyond a professional curiosity and a perfectly natural attraction. Even as he told himself that he felt the corner of his mouth tugging up into a wry, humourless smile. He couldn’t let himself feel anything more. He _shouldn’t_ let himself feel anything more.

If only hearts listened to things such as that. If only hearts cared.

Caleb took a breath, feeling it echoing around his lungs, and took another step. He hadn’t alerted Mollymauk to his presence yet and he knew that that was foolish, but, in this moment, he didn’t care. He could reach out to Molly at any time when he was within the mist. For as long as he stayed here, for as long as he walked this winding road towards a hilltop that never grew closer, he would be close to Molly.

Caleb took another step. He just had to keep walking. That was all he had to do. He just had to keep walking, and let Molly know that he was there, and go back to checking over paperwork before eating dinner and going to bed, and then tomorrow he would go to Molly’s grave, and say his goodbyes, and finish his work in Alfield. He just had to do that. He just had to do what he had come here to do.

Another step. Another.

He just had to finish his job.

Another step.

He just had to say goodbye.

Another step.

He just had to leave Molly behind.

Caleb stopped walking.

The mist swirled around him for a moment as though buffeted by his earlier movement before settling back down into absolute, unerring stillness. For a moment Caleb just stood there, alone and isolated on the winding road, and then, with no true rhyme or reason to his actions, he sat down.

The fog gathered around him, thick and heavy and blanketing him in silence as he sat on the mist-damp cobbles. He could feel the water seeping through his clothing, knew that it would only make him colder, but he didn’t care. This space, between Molly’s domain and his own, was the closest he could come to dreaming without having to sleep. It was the closest he could come to Molly.

With careful, steady hands, Caleb slowly unwound Molly’s scarf from around his neck. Every motion made the fabric of it shift, letting Caleb inhale another wave of lavender-incense-opium. It settled heavy in his lungs, filling his mind with the thought of Molly’s skin and Molly’s touch and _Molly_ , of his whip-sharp smile and the banked heat of his ruby eyes and of the peacock that curled around his skin, almost as bright and beautiful as the man himself. Caleb’s thoughts on the walk to the hill had been of Molly, yes, but not as much as they were now. On his walk he had been thinking of Molly, and Yasha, and Beau, and the nature of Yasha’s return and the delight and wonder and _joy_ that he had seen on Beau’s face, and of if it was at all possible that such a thing could happen to Mollymauk, too. He didn’t know. He suspected no one knew, not even Caduceus, who always seemed to be so very aware of the actions and nature of ghosts and spirits.

Slowly, Caleb bundled up the scarf into a careful ball and set it in his lap, his fingers pressed against the soft fabric. He drew in a breath, feeling the chill of it in his throat and lungs. He couldn’t smell lavender. He couldn’t smell incense. He couldn’t smell anything at all.

But, right now, that was alright.

With the fabric of the scarf no longer in the way, Caleb could finally once again feel the mist touching against his skin. He tilted his head a little, giving a soft, shaky sigh, and shivered as the mist caressed his jaw, running down his neck and dipping beneath the collar of his coat.

“ _Hallo_ ,” he said quietly. “ _Hallo, Mollymauk. Hallo, Liebling_.”

Against his skin, the mist drifted and sighed. Caleb shut his eyes, twisting his fingers tighter in the scarf. With his eyes shut like this he could almost convince himself that the light, barely-there touch that he felt was the same as Molly’s touches in his dreams, but he knew that it wasn’t. He still had no clear memories of his dreams, always waking to find them fading from his thoughts like sand slipping through his fingers, but he knew some aspects of them. He knew the smile that Mollymauk always wore, knew the sound of his voice, knew how he would, sometimes, tease Caleb for his reactions to certain photos that Caleb had looked at before falling asleep. He knew Mollymauk’s touch, and he knew Mollymauk’s voice, and he knew that, somewhere inside his own chest, his own heart throbbed with yearning.

He knew that it was impossible.

All the same, he longed.

“ _Mollymauk,”_ he murmured once again, his words even quieter this time. He felt the mist shift as though caught in a breeze, felt it slipping through the strands of his hair and tugging gently at the cuff of his coat, and he smiled, just a little. “ _Hallo, Liebling_. It’s just me. Beauregard is- Beauregard is not with me right now. She is with Yasha.” His smile widened as, against his skin, he felt the mist pause, just for a moment. “Yasha came back,” he continued quietly. “We went to her grave today, you know. Myself, and Beauregard, and Jester, and Nott and Fjord, too. Beauregard needed to apologise and say her farewells, and… well, Yasha came back. We do not- none of us know how. None of us know why. But after Beauregard apologised, and seemed to move on, Yasha just… she pulled herself out of the ground, and she was- she was alive again. She was alive…”

Caleb trailed off, swallowing damply.

“She was alive,” he whispered. Beneath his fingers, Molly’s scarf was as soft as dreams. “She was _alive_ , Mollymauk. She came back.”

_She came back, and we do not know how_. Somehow, sitting here amongst the mist and memories, Caleb felt that he never would know, and he hated that fact. He hated that Yasha herself didn’t know how it had happened, hated that there was no way that he could ensure that it would happen again, hated that there was nothing that he could do to help Mollymauk, or Beau, or any of the others. His skills, so finely honed for his normal, boring job, were entirely useless here. _He_ was entirely useless here. All he could do was sit in the mist, Mollymauk’s ribbon in his hair and Mollymauk’s scarf in his hands, and feel the tears on his cheeks.

When Caleb drew in a breath, he could feel the cold crystallising over his heart like frost.

“Come back,” Caleb whispered near-silently. “Please. Come back. Come back to me. Come back to Beau.”

There was no response. The mist didn’t stop moving, still brushing and caressing over Caleb’s skin, but it felt thoughtful, somehow, contemplative like Mollymauk wasn’t sure of how to respond. Perhaps he knew that he couldn’t come back and didn’t want to cause Caleb further pain. Perhaps he didn’t know at all. Perhaps Mollymauk wasn’t even there, wasn’t listening to him in the slightest, and all that Caleb was feeling was the perfectly natural breeze disturbing the mist and tricking him into thinking that there was some other being on the road with him.

Caleb couldn’t say for how long he sat in the mist, turning every thought over in his mind over and over again until they barely felt like thoughts at all. He came to no conclusions, had no shocking or wonderful revelations, and by the time he forced himself to his feet, continuing his walk along the road, all he felt was a little numb from the coldness of the cobbles. He hadn’t managed to disregard his feelings for Mollymauk. He hadn’t been able to convince himself that they didn’t exist.

But equally well, he hadn’t been able to come to terms with them.

After all, what good could possibly come from being in love with a dead man?

When Caleb passed through the gates of Tealeaf Manor, he barely even registered it. He let his feet carry him to the front door, unlocking it unthinkingly before letting himself inside. The house was cold, still and silent save for the distant ticking of the grandfather clock. There was no life here. There was no joy.

Caleb took a step forwards.

With a sound like a tomb sealing shut, the front door closed behind him.

\---

Somehow the day passed, but Caleb was powerless to say how. The minutes crept past like hours, slow and lethargic, until, suddenly and all at once, Caleb could see the darkness pressing against the windows of the house, the night seeking to be let in as, out in the hallway, the grandfather clock counted out the hours. Caleb wasn’t sure how or when it had got so late, but in a way he was thankful that it was late enough for him to go to bed. He didn’t want tomorrow to happen, didn’t want to have to go to Mollymauk’s grave and say his goodbyes, but all the same he felt tired down to his bones, exhausted and worn out in a way that he hadn’t felt in many, many years. It was almost a relief to climb into bed, feeling the familiar weight of Frumpkin settling down by his feet, and shut his eyes against the faint moonlight. For a long time Caleb simply laid there, sleep eluding him entirely, and listened to the soft tapping of the branches against the window panes. The sound, once so unsettling and strange, was a familiar one now. It felt comfortable, reassuring and welcoming. It felt like home.

Mollymauk’s bedroom felt like home. Mollymauk’s bed, untouched for years now, felt like home. _Mollymauk_ felt like home.

The veil of sleep settled around Caleb’s shoulders, and he dreamed.

He dreamed, as he so often did these days, of Mollymauk.

It was night in his dream, deep and dark as pitch, but Caleb barely paid it any heed. He could see Mollymauk standing before him, just out of reach and as beautiful as ever. The tiefling stood in the hallway just beyond the bedroom door, drenched in moonlight so bright that it bleached out the colour of the blood that still soaked through his shirt. In the silver light the blood looked to be the colour of ink, dark and thick and as jarring as ever as it seeped through his clothing. All of Molly looked washed-out and faded, for all that he looked as solid and as real as he ever did in dreams. He looked more real, in fact. What dreams Caleb had had of Molly in the past had always felt strangely light, buoyant and drifting and untethered as though they could fade away at any moment. This one didn’t. This one felt tangible in a way that dreams never had before.

Mollymauk caught Caleb’s eye, and he smiled.

“ _Hello,”_ he said softly. He took a step forward, stepping into the bedroom that Caleb had hardly even realised that he was stood in. His tail swayed behind him, the action soft and slow, and some part of Caleb’s mind that was more awake than the rest realised that he’d never paid Molly’s tail any attention before in any of his dreams. He’d never paid the setting this much attention before, in fact. He’d never noticed this much. Somehow, for some reason, he felt more _present_ in this dream, and he had no idea why.

Molly, however, seemed like he did. His smile widened slightly as he moved closer, the charms on his horns jingling faintly in the otherwise silent house.

“ _I’m going to assume from your face that this is working. I thought I’d try and do something a little… call it a little bit special,”_ Molly said, his grin now transforming into a mischievous smirk. “ _I know how fond you are of my dreams, Caleb dear – not even the moonlight is going to hide how red you’re going, love – and I thought that I could, maybe, try and make something a bit more interesting for you. Something where you’re a bit more aware.”_ For the space of a breath Molly’s smile flickered. “ _Something to remember me by.”_ He reached out as he walked closer, his hands coming to settle on Caleb’s waist, certain and familiar. Molly’s touch was just as cold as ever, but Caleb relished it. He sighed as Molly’s hands rested on his waist, shivering a little at the icy touch of his skin, and leaned forwards, pressing into the contact. He felt his own hands raise automatically and a moment later they came to settle on Molly’s hips, his thumbs smoothing over Molly’s hip bones above the layer of his trousers. Even through the fabric separating them, Caleb could feel the chill that radiated off of Molly’s body. He loved it. He wanted it. He wanted Molly.

He wanted to kiss him.

He may never be able to kiss him again.

Caleb pitched forwards, pressing his mouth to Molly’s in a sudden, desperate kiss. Molly made a small noise of surprise, the sound muffled against Caleb’s lips, but melted into the kiss almost immediately, his mouth opening beneath Caleb’s. For a moment his hands flexed on Caleb’s waist, tightening and squeezing above the fabric of his shirt. Caleb loved it. He wanted it. He wanted to feel Molly’s touch, wanted to feel Molly’s chill, wanted to feel all of Molly while he still had the chance. He didn’t know what would happen tomorrow. He knew that he had his hopes, knew that he, like everyone else he would be meeting at the little family cemetery, was hoping for Molly to return just how Yasha had, but there was no way of knowing for sure, and the realisation that Molly could very well move on and remain truly dead forever had lodged in his mind like a stone. He kissed Molly over and over again, swiping his tongue over Molly’s lower lip and shivering at the sound of Molly’s soft moan.

“ _Caleb,”_ Molly gasped. “ _You- Caleb- mm-”_

Caleb didn’t speak. He just kissed Molly, tightening his hold on Molly’s hips until he could feel his bones pressing into his palms, sure and solid and as real as anything could be in this between-space. He wanted so desperately to kiss Molly but he also didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, and so after a short second he forced himself to lean back, wanted to check that Molly was alright with everything that he was doing.

It seemed that Molly was. He chased after Caleb’s lips with a soft whine, his hands slipping up Caleb’s sides to rest on his chest. “ _Caleb?”_ he murmured softly. “ _Are you alright, love?”_

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb said. “I’m- _ja,_ yes, I am just- I wanted to make sure that this was alright, I wanted to make sure that you wanted-”

_“That I wanted this?”_ Molly asked, finishing Caleb’s question for him. Caleb swallowed, giving a quick nod, and Molly’s face immediately relaxed into a smile. “ _Caleb_ ,” he said, his voice softening, “ _allow me to assure you that I am_ more _than alright with anything that you want to do, love. Although… are you sure everything is alright? You’re a little, ah…”_ He trailed off, his smile fading a little. _“I mean, I’m not going to object to your enthusiasm, but it’s a little… unusual, should I say? You’re not normally so forthcoming, though I definitely encourage it.”_

Even in the dream, Caleb felt the tips of his ears burning red. He shrugged a little, glancing away, but didn’t relinquish his hold on Molly’s hip. “I am- I was just…” Just what? What was he supposed to say in response? There was so much that he wanted to say, was so much that he _needed_ to say, and yet, in this moment, he could think of no words at all. There were no words to encapsulate what he was feeling, to capture the tangled knot of loss and grief and mourning and shame and want and desire that had lodged itself within his chest. There was no way to explain to Molly how desperately he wanted him to stay. There was no way to explain to Molly how much it would hurt to see him go.

There was no way to explain to Molly just what Caleb felt for him, and so he wouldn’t.

“I missed you,” Caleb managed to say. “I just- I missed you, Mollymauk. I will miss you.”

Molly’s face softened. “ _Caleb…_ ”

“I am- it has been a long day. I have- there is much to think about, but I do not want to think right now. I do not want to- I just want you, Mollymauk. That is all. I just want you…” Caleb swallowed, feeling tears coat the back of his throat in salt. “I just want you,” he whispered, and barely a moment later Mollymauk leaned in, and pressed his lips to Caleb’s.

_“My darling,”_ Molly murmured, the words lost between his mouth and Caleb’s. _“My darling, my darling, oh, my love…”_

“ _Molly_ ,” Caleb whispered back. He squeezed his eyes tighter shut, pulling Molly in until there was no space between them at all as he kissed him back, as if by keeping Molly as physically close to him as possible he could in some way prevent the veil of death from coming to take him. He couldn’t, though. He knew that he couldn’t. There was no true reality here. There was no world beyond the windows of Molly’s bedroom, were no trees tapping and scratching at the glass, was no clock counting its slow and dolorous seconds out at the end of the hallway. The space they were in, the only space where they could ever be close, didn’t exist. It wasn’t real.

None of this was real.

On Caleb’s cheeks, his tears stung like mid-winter frost.

“Molly,” he whispered again. He had no other words to say. “Molly, I- I-”

_“It’s alright,”_ Molly murmured. He kissed Caleb quickly and then leaned back a little to smile at him, lifting a hand to thumb away the tears now rolling down Caleb’s cheeks, but his own smile was weak and wavering, trembling around his lips and not quite reaching his eyes. Caleb hated it. He hated _this_. He hated knowing that this was a dream, hating knowing that it wasn’t real, hated knowing that he had never truly known Mollymauk and that he never truly would. Even now, with Molly holding him and touching him and kissing him as though drowning for the touch of Caleb’s lips against his own, some part of Caleb’s mind still lay coiled sullen and sharp, insisting that this was nothing more than his imagination. That he had never spoken to Molly in his dreams, that he had never felt his touch in waking hours, that ghosts may be real but that what he had with Molly was _not_.

And then Caleb blinked, clearing the tears from his lashes, and saw his feelings for Mollymauk reflected back at him in Mollymauk’s eyes.

“ _It’s alright,”_ Molly murmured again, quieter and softer. He leaned forwards, kissing Caleb gently, and Caleb let out a stifled gasp against his lips, the sound halfway to a sob. “ _Caleb, my Caleb, it’s alright. This will be alright_.”

Caleb didn’t have any words to say in response to that. He didn’t have anything say, didn’t have any agreement to give or any disagreement to discuss. He didn’t want to discuss the possibility of things not being alright. He didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility of that happening.

Caleb took a breath, incense and opium and lavender and _Molly_ flooding his lungs, and pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind as best he could. Whatever happened tomorrow, whatever Molly did… he couldn’t change it. He couldn’t help. He couldn’t bring Molly back, and he couldn’t force the world to return him, and he couldn’t do _anything_ to make the situation better except to just accept it, and process it, and kiss and love Molly while he was still able to do so.

That, he felt, he could do. He could kiss Molly. Caleb stepped in a little closer, his eyes fluttering shut, and let himself relax into Molly’s kisses, opening his mouth beneath Molly’s tongue and stifling a soft groan when it swept across his lips. Gradually the kisses that they traded became slower, turning almost lazy as tongues touched and hands roamed, every action building and gathering and edged with a heat that very nearly chased away the sense of loss that blanketed Caleb’s mind like lead. He sighed against Molly’s lips, twisted his hands in the fabric of Molly’s shirt and tilted his head to kiss Molly again, and then again after that, pressing lips to lips over and over and over as if he had any chance at all of keeping the finality of death at bay. He could hear Molly making tiny, soft noises against his lips, little gasps and groans and the occasional beautiful whimper, each one escaping him to hang in the air like spider-silk. Caleb wanted to keep them all. He wanted to capture them, savour them, treasure them, keep them with him all the way back to Rexxentrum. He wanted to remember this forever; he wanted to remember how Molly’s hands felt scrabbling at his waist when he ran his tongue across Molly’s lower lip; he wanted to remember the tightness of Molly’s tail around his ankle, holding and stroking and squeezing as though it never wanted to let go; he wanted to remember _Molly_ , in the only way that he had ever known him.

He wanted to know Molly in death, and the thought made frost settle around his heart.

“Molly,” he murmured. He angled his head, kissing Molly again. Molly was cold against his lips, just as he always had been. It was like kissing marble. It was like kissing shadow. Caleb didn’t care. “Molly, Mollymauk…”

“ _Caleb_ ,” Molly whispered. Caleb felt the shape of Molly’s lips pressing his name against his mouth. He wanted to feel it again.

He swallowed. “I- Molly-”

“ _Yeah?”_

“I can’t…”

“ _You can’t what?”_

Caleb shook his head. He couldn’t say it, _shouldn’t_ say it. He couldn’t admit this, couldn’t allow himself to admit to himself just how desperately he longed for Molly, just how much Molly meant to him,

But he had to say it.

He needed Molly to _know_.

“I can’t lose you,” Caleb managed to say, the words blurring together as they stumbled off his tongue. He leant forwards, pressing his forehead to the join of Molly’s neck and shoulder, and shut his eyes. “I can’t- I don’t want to lose you, Mollymauk. Not- I can’t.”

Molly laughed softly, one of his hands raising to tangle in Caleb’s hair. He ran his fingers through the strands of it, tugging gently on the ends of the velvet ribbon that was somehow still present, even in the strange, impossible realm of dreams. “ _You already have, you know_ ,” he said, but there was no real humour to his words, only a thin veneer that entirely failed to mask the dull pain behind them. “ _I mean, I’m already dead…”_

“I know, I know you are, but you are not- you are not _gone_.”

_“Not yet.”_

“Not ever,” Caleb heard himself say. He lifted his head, looking Molly dead in the eye. Through the tears that clung to his lashes, the moonlight shining off Molly seemed to make him sparkle like the stars. “Not- Mollymauk, you can- you know what happened with Yasha, _ja_? You know that? You know how she came back?”

“ _I do,”_ Molly said. “ _I heard you in the mist. You told me what happened_.”

“Could you do that?” The words tumbled out of Caleb in a rush, hopeful and desperate and half-choked tears. “Could you- do you think that you could do that, Mollymauk? Could you- I do not understand how it works, but could you talk to Yasha? Could you ask her how she did it? Could you- could you-“ Caleb cut himself off with a stifled sob, lifting a hand to briefly cover his mouth as yet more tears gathered at the corners of his eyes, starting to run down his face. He could see Molly watching him, his face crumpled in concern and apology, and he wished with all his heart that he wasn’t doing this. He wished that he didn’t care so much. He wished that he could stay calm, and collected, and remove himself from his emotions and appreciate this wonderful, impossible dream for what it was.

But he couldn’t.

At the back of his head he could feel Molly’s fingers pressing, running gently and slowly through his hair as though trying to soothe him. They felt cold, as Molly’s skin always did, but Caleb couldn’t deny the comfort that they brought.

“Mollymauk,” he whispered, and Molly smiled a little, brushing one thumb across Caleb’s cheek and pulling it back covered in starlight and tears. “I want- I- I want-”

_“What do you want?”_ Molly asked.

Caleb didn’t even hesitate.

“You,” he said. “I want you.”

_“You have me,”_ Molly replied. He ducked his head a little, pressing his lips to Caleb’s in a fleeting kiss, and Caleb nearly sobbed at the contact. “ _You have me, Caleb.”_

“I might not-”

“ _But you might.”_

“But you- _”_

“ _Caleb.”_

Caleb fell silent. He looked up at Molly, feeling his lungs squeeze as he tried to keep his quiet, _pointless_ sobs at bay, and Molly just smiled back at him. “ _Caleb,”_ he murmured, his voice like moonlight. “ _Oh, Caleb, darling…_ ” Molly lifted his hands, gently placing them on either side of Caleb’s head. His skin almost stung against Caleb’s cheeks it was so cold, but the cold felt distant, the iciness of his touch softened by the between-space of the dream. _“I will try my best to come back to you_ ,” Molly said softly. “ _I promise. I will do whatever I can to come back to you, and to Beau, and to Yasha, and all the others. If I’m going to die fully and entirely, then I’m going to go kicking and screaming the entire bloody way_.”

Caleb couldn’t help but smile a little at that. “ _Ja?”_

_“Oh, absolutely. I was a nuisance in life and I’m going to do my best to be a nuisance in death too.”_

“I think- I think Beau will agree with me when I say that you already have been.”

“ _Pardon you, I’ve been a_ delight,” Molly corrected, his eyes sparkling. _“I only scared you a few times, after all.”_

“Mm…. Molly?”

“ _Yes, love?”_

“Would you kiss me again?”

Immediately, Mollymauk’s face softened. “ _Of course,”_ he said quietly. “ _I- of course.”_

Caleb swallowed. There was more that he wanted to say, more that he wanted to ask for, but for once he found that he wasn’t afraid to say it. Tomorrow, Mollymauk might not be here at all. Tomorrow, he may never have the chance to ask this of Molly again.

This might very well be his only chance, and so he gathered his courage around his heart and moved himself to speak. “Mollymauk?”

“ _Yes?”_

“Take me to bed.”

In the darkness of Molly’s room, the moonlight seemed to flow like sand. It settled in Molly’s hair as Molly looked at Caleb, darkness staining his cheeks as his hands flexed on Caleb’s waist. Beyond him Caleb could see the moonlight pooling wherever it touched, gathering in patches of silver along the edges of Molly’s vanity and seeping across the floor, weaving through the carpet and sighing around their ankles. Caleb could feel it caressing against his skin as Molly visibly swallowed, and for a moment he started to grow nervous, unsure if he’d asked too much of the tiefling.

“ _Oh_ ,” Molly said, and at the sound of his voice Caleb felt himself relax immediately. Molly hadn’t sounded uncomfortable. He’d sounded delighted. “ _Oh, Caleb, love… I don’t think I can say no to that.”_ He leaned in, kissing Caleb, and took a small step closer, gently urging Caleb to move back. The moonlight tugged at Caleb’s ankles as he started to step back, slipping up beneath the hem of his trousers and sinking into his very bones to fill him with mournful silver light from the inside out. It was beautiful. Molly was beautiful. The purple of Molly’s skin was very nearly washed out to grey by the moonlight, the vibrant inks of his tattoos faded nearly to nothing at all, but his eyes were as bright as ever, calling to Caleb like a beacon. Caleb leaned in, meeting Molly halfway in a kiss that quickly gave way to another, and then another after that, each one building and mounting as, together, they rediscovered the heat that had been kindling earlier. It didn’t take long for the kisses to turn desperate and wanting again, and very soon Caleb felt the edge of bed pressing against the back of his knees. He very nearly stumbled backwards onto the mattress but managed not to, and he felt more than he heard Mollymauk’s amused chuckle against his lips at his sudden startle. Molly didn’t stop kissing him, though. He didn’t stop kissing him, and he didn’t stop touching him either, didn’t stop swiping his thumbs over Caleb’s hips or running his hands along the planes of Caleb’s chest like he couldn’t get enough of him. Caleb felt much the same. He _wanted_ Molly, wanted so much of him, and with every soft sigh and quiet groan that Molly gave at the touch of their tongues and the slide of their lips Caleb felt yet more heat gather in his bones. He could feel himself growing hard, could feel himself starting to rut gently against Molly’s leg, and he did nothing to stop it. If Molly disliked it, if Molly had changed his mind and didn’t want this to happen, then he would say as much. Caleb knew that. Here, in this realm, Molly had more power than he did.

As it was, though, it didn’t seem that Molly wanted to stop it at all. He gasped a little at the first tentative twitch of Caleb’s hips, leaning back with a sparkle in his eye and glancing down to the bulge in Caleb’s trousers with a grin that spoke volumes.

“ _Oh,”_ he said, his voice practically a purr. “ _Oh, hello there…”_

Caleb could feel himself blushing. “Is this- is this alright?”

_“Caleb, darling, this is more than alright_ ,” Molly replied, his delight evident in his voice. He kissed Caleb again, dirty and hot and wonderful, and gently guided him onto the bed, moving up to kneel between his legs. His hands slipped down Caleb’s body, starting to run over his thighs, and Caleb gasped at the feel of them pressing so close to where he now tented the fabric of his trousers. Molly looked up at him, his eyes hooded, and skimmed one hand in closer. “ _Do you want me to-”_

“ _Please_ ,” Caleb gasped. There was no shame now. There was no hesitation. There was only _want_ , and _Molly_ , and _please_.

Molly didn’t even hesitate. He made quick work of Caleb’s trousers, tugging them down his legs and dropping them carelessly off the side of the bed before making equally quick work of Caleb’s smallclothes. He gave a quiet but still audible moan when Caleb’s cock came free, flushed darker at the head and painted with silver by the moonlight, and he only glanced up at Caleb for long enough for Caleb to give a nod of permission before he reached out and took Caleb’s cock in his hand.

“ _F-fuck_ ,” Caleb groaned. He gasped at the half-familiar touch, dropping his head back and giving a ragged pant as Molly started to stroke. Molly’s touch was cold, as cold as he had expected it to be, but it wasn’t painful. Just like when Molly had touched him in the waking world, when he had encouraged Caleb to touch himself, the cold felt almost distant. More than that, Caleb realised blearily – there was no unpleasant friction to be found, either. Whatever was happening in this dream, however much it was that Molly could control, it seemed that he could control this. It seemed that he wanted this to be just as good for Caleb as Caleb wanted it to be for him, and the thought alone made a soft moan spill from his lips.

“ _Gods,”_ Molly murmured. He twisted his hand, eyes wide and fixed on Caleb, and when Caleb cried out he leaned forwards, pressing his lips to Caleb’s in a messy, needy kiss. Caleb groaned again. The sound was lost immediately, taken by Molly’s lips and consumed by the shadows and twisting moonlight, but Caleb knew that Molly heard it. He could feel it in the slight stutter in Molly’s touch, could hear it in Molly’s own delighted purr.

“ _Good boy_ ,” Molly murmured, and the words sent heat lancing through Caleb, making him shiver even as he felt himself flush all over. Molly purred again, the sound closer to a growl, and twisted his hand, seeming to delight in Caleb’s resulting gasp. “ _Good boy, Caleb, you- mm-”_

“ _Molly,”_ Caleb groaned. “You’re- I- _”_

“ _Yeah_?”

“I want- you- I- _”_

“What?”

“ _Fuck me_ ,” Caleb begged. “ _Bitte,_ Mollymauk, _Ich-_ I- _please.”_

“ _Gods_ ,” Molly breathed. “ _Gods, Caleb, do you have any idea how fucking hot you sound like that? Do you have any idea how- gods, yes, just-”_ He kissed Caleb again, sliding his hand along the length of Caleb’s cock and audibly groaning when Caleb bucked up into it, desperate for the friction. “ _Gods_ ,” he said again. “ _You’re- gods,_ Caleb.”

“ _Molly_.”

“ _Yeah, I’m- yeah.”_

Molly kissed him, the smell of incense lingering in Caleb’s lungs, and around them the moonlight rose like the tide.

Somehow, the remainders of both their clothes were shed. Caleb wasn’t sure how, but he didn’t particularly care, either. He lost track of time as Molly continued to kiss him, lost track of time as Molly slipped his hand between Caleb’s thighs, lost track of time as Molly slowly worked him open, the soft silence of the house punctuated only by his own breathless gasps and the slick sounds of Molly’s fingers moving within him. The moonlight was flowing around them fully now, drowning the furniture and floor to make an island of their shared bed. Caleb barely noticed. He barely noticed anything at all save for the sensation of Molly’s fingers inside him, of Molly’s hand on his cock, of Molly’s voice and Molly’s touch and _Molly_ , and when Molly finally pressed inside him, hard and heavy and wonderful, Caleb heard himself cry out.

_“Caleb_ ,” Molly gasped. He pressed in slowly, a low groan spilling from his lips. “ _Caleb, darling, you’re- gods-”_ He cut himself off with a soft moan, drawing back and then thrusting in again. Caleb could feel him trembling slightly beneath his hands, could feel the tension in his thighs as the coolness of his skin, and he longed for it. Molly moved again, a little quicker this time, and the sound of his gasp was lost to Caleb’s lips as Caleb surged up to kiss him, one hand tangling in the hair at the back of Molly’s head. He kissed him desperately, hungrily, and with every roll of Molly’s hips he felt tears threatening to spill.

_Please_ , Caleb wanted to say. He didn’t know what he was begging for. He didn’t know if he was begging for Molly’s touch, or for Molly to keep moving, or for Molly to kiss him or hold him or do anything like that. He didn’t know if he was begging Molly to stay. He thought that he might be.

He didn’t say it, though. He couldn’t. This might be a dream, might be an unreal space that had no impact upon the waking world, but it was more than just that, now. What he had with Molly was real. What he felt for Molly was real. And to ask him to stay, to beg him to stay, to acknowledge just how much Mollymauk meant to him and how deeply it would hurt to lose a man he had never known in life… Caleb couldn’t allow himself to think about that. He couldn’t allow himself to think about going to Mollymauk’s grave in the morning, and saying his goodbyes, and letting Molly leave this realm for good. He couldn’t think about any of that.

And so instead, he said nothing at all. He just reached down, searching blindly for Molly’s hand, and when he found it he held on as tightly as he could; a drowning man trying desperately to stay afloat.

Molly rocked his hips forwards again, and Caleb squeezed his eyes shut so tightly that he saw stars.

“ _Caleb,”_ Molly gasped. “ _Caleb, love, you- gods-”_

“ _Molly_ ,” Caleb groaned. He couldn’t think anymore but for thoughts of Mollymauk, couldn’t focus on the world beyond this dream-space and couldn’t stop to contemplate what tomorrow might bring. All that was in his mind now was Mollymauk, was Molly’s hand entangled with his own and Molly’s lips pressing to his and _Molly_ , here and speaking and present and _alive_ in this place that would never truly exist. Molly rolled his hips, thrusting in with just a touch more urgency than the situation would normally require, and between that and the soft hitching in his breath that wasn’t just born from pleasure, Caleb knew that Molly felt what he felt. He knew that Molly could feel the awful, mist-numb pain in his chest. He knew that Molly felt the longing that had soaked into his very bones.

He knew that Molly wanted him.

He knew that he wanted Molly.

And, here, they could have each other.

Caleb shifted suddenly, sitting up and tilting his head back to press his lips to Molly’s. His spare hand raised, tangling in Molly’s hair and using the touch to keep him close and Caleb kissed him again and again and again, gasping raggedly against his mouth between desperate, heart-sick kisses. He didn’t have any words, didn’t have anything to say that hadn’t been said already. He just _wanted_ , wanted to feel Molly and kiss Molly and touch Molly and he wanted to come, wanted for Molly to make him come, wanted to hear Molly cry and gasp and whine and moan and he wanted to be the one to cause it. He wrapped his legs around Molly’s waist, drawing him closer in, and groaned against Molly’s lips at the change in angle, feeling his gut drawing close and tight.

“More,” Caleb managed to gasp. He felt so much, felt like he was burning and freezing and like Mollymauk’s touch was the only thing keeping him grounded as the moonlight lapped around the edges of the bed, threatening at any moment to spill across the mattress and consume them both. “Please, Mollymauk, I- _ah_ \- I- more, _please_.”

_“More- f-fuck- more of_ what, _love?”_

“More of _you_.”

_“You have me_ ,” Molly said. His words were ragged, raw and edged with the same loss and desperation that Caleb felt so strongly, but they were certain and true and _honest_ all the same. He twisted his hand around Caleb’s cock, his thumb swiping over the head, and when Caleb cried out, the shadows swallowing the sound of his voice as the moonlight rose further, he could hear Molly moaning with him. _“You- you have me, Caleb, You’ll always have me-_ ”

“ _Molly-_ ”

_“You have me_ ,” Molly promised. “ _I swear it, Caleb. I lo-_ ”

Caleb came with a wordless, soundless cry. He squeezed his eyes shut, his head arcing back as he felt his entire body thrum with heat and warmth and release, squeezing down around Molly’s cock as the moonlight flooded across his body. He could feel it pressing into his skin, winding around him and holding him tight as Molly continued to move within him, his every motion growing more and more erratic until he too came with a soft, gasping moan, the sound of Caleb’s name falling from his mouth like a prayer. Through the daze of his own release Caleb could feel Molly’s hand tightening around his own as the tiefling leant forwards, dropping down to cover Caleb’s body.

Against Caleb’s skin, Molly felt utterly, entirely alive.

“Mollymauk,” Caleb murmured softly. He lifted a hand, settling it in Molly’s hair, and ran his fingers through the soft strands as Molly panted against his skin, still holding Caleb’s hand like a lifeline. “Mollymauk, _meine Liebe_ …”

“ _Yeah,”_ Molly murmured, the word than ragged breath. “ _That was- yeah_.”

For a few long, uncountable seconds, the room was silent. Caleb dropped his head back against the pillow, distantly aware of the moonlight that now lapped around his body, and listened to the soft sound of their slowing breaths as, gradually, they came back to themselves. After a while Molly started to shift, letting go of Caleb’s hand and moving up the bed to curl against Caleb’s side, one arm resting absently across Caleb’s stomach. Without thinking Caleb moved too, wrapping an arm around Molly and holding him as close as he could with muscles made weak by pleasure and release. It was easy to hold Molly. It was easy to lie there, in a room painted silver by moonlight, and listen to Molly breathing, and imagine a world where this was normal. Where this was normal, and it wasn’t a dream, and where Caleb was still truly awake, his mind not weighed down with the tiredness that was starting to settle about him like a cloak.

Somehow, Molly seemed to notice Caleb’s rapidly approaching exhaustion. Perhaps it was the dream and how closely it was tied to Molly that allowed him to notice it, or perhaps it was how accustomed he was to Caleb and his actions, but either way he stirred almost before Caleb noticed his own tiredness, propping himself up on one elbow and looking down at Caleb with a small, sad smile.

“ _Sleep, Caleb”_ Molly murmured. He lifted a hand, brushing his knuckles gently over Caleb’s cheek, and Caleb turned his head into the touch without thinking about it. “ _Go to sleep, love.”_

Caleb shook his head even as he felt himself starting to yawn. “I don’t- I don’t want to go to sleep,” he protested weakly. His words were soft, his voice slightly hoarse, but they were audible. “I don’t- I- Molly-”

_“I’ll see you tomorrow, alright?”_ Molly assured him. he ducked his head, kissing Caleb quickly, and when he drew back Caleb could see the tears lining his lashes, sparkling as though all the stars in the heavens had made their home upon Molly’s face. “ _I’ll see you tomorrow. I promise. I’ll be there. I’ll come back. I don’t know how, but I’ll do it. I promise. I promise.”_

Caleb didn’t say anything in response to that. He just lifted a hand, fumbling to find where Molly’s own hand rested against his face, and once he found it he took it, squeezing it hard. He wanted to say something, wanted to assure Molly that he knew that it would be alright, that tomorrow he and Beau and Jester and all the others would see Molly again and that it would all be fine, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know how much control Molly would have over it. He didn’t know if it would work.

And so he said nothing at all, and he rolled over, and he pressed his face to the curve of Molly’s neck and drew opium and incense into his lungs as the moonlight rose to cover them both.

When Caleb woke the following morning, stirred to wakefulness by the winter sunlight shining weakly through his window, it was to find tear tracks running down his cheeks. 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter of this fic will be posted on **December 16th!**
> 
> The art in this chapter was done by the ever-wonderful [@fswrites](https://twitter.com/fswrites)!


	19. Chapter 19

It was cold at the top of the hill. The chilly air snuck beneath the scarf that Caleb had wound around his neck before leaving the house, slipping icy fingers beneath the collar of his coat and pressing them against his skin until he was shivering. He knew that he should be accustomed to it by now, knew that he had expected for it to be cold when he had wrapped Mollymauk’s scarf around his neck before leaving the house, but he was sure that it was colder today than it had been since he had first arrived in Alfield, as though the weather itself was mourning Mollymauk’s passing. The air felt sharper, somehow, clear and bright like ice wherever it pressed against his skin.

Thankfully, Caleb didn’t have long to wait. He knew now when Caduceus tended to arrive at the house, and he’d barely been waiting outside for more than a handful of minutes before he saw the distant, blurred shape of the cart approaching through the mist, Beau sitting awkwardly at Caduceus’ side and Jester, Yasha, Nott, and Fjord sitting in the cart behind her. Caduceus parked the cart just inside the gate, stepping down as if this were any other day. None of the others seemed to share in his calm, though. As they approached, Caduceus following along with them, Caleb could see traces of uncertainty on all of their faces save Yasha’s and Beau’s, who alone seemed as close to composed as it was possible for anyone to be. Beau’s eyes seemed a little swollen and red but there were no tears on her face, and, very quickly, Caleb found his gaze being drawn away from the puffiness around her eyes.

Between Beau’s hands was held a bright bundle of fabric flowers.

They stood out against the drab gravel and grey sky, each one vibrant and loud and very nearly as colourful as Mollymauk himself had been. No two of them seemed to be the same, but the more Caleb looked, watching as Beau and the others approached, the more he thought he could pick out flowers that he recognised; peonies and poppies and snapdragons and, winding through them all, tiny, delicate forget-me-nots, crafted from pale blue fabric and what looked like scraps of lace. The whole bouquet looked almost random, bordering on chaotic, but it worked. It worked for Mollymauk. The patterned fabrics and twists of ribbon all served to remind Caleb of him yet more strongly, calling to mind images of his numerous ostentatious waistcoats and scarves. They looked a little out of place between Beau’s hands, the colours not ones that Caleb would normally think to associate with her, but at the same time they worked. Looking at this, at the flowers held so tightly and yet so carefully between her hands, Caleb thought he could see how she would have been around Molly.

“Shut up,” Beau muttered the moment she reached Caleb, glancing away from him as his own gaze remained settled on the flowers. “Just- look, it’s too fuckin’ cold for actual flowers, alright? Just like it was for Yasha. But I didn’t- I’m not gonna leave him with a boring-looking grave. He wouldn’t have wanted that, so Jester made me these instead. They’re- just shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Caleb replied, frowning a little.

“But you were going to.”

“I… I mean, _ja_ , I suppose I was going to comment on it, but I was just going to say that the flowers seem to suit Mollyma-”

“Look, are we going to go say bye to Molly or what?”

Caleb swallowed back his words. Beau was right – there was no point in wasting time. “ _Ja_ ,” he said quietly, turning and starting to lead the way around to the back of the house. “Come on, the cemetery is-”

“I know where the fuckin’ cemetery is, Caleb,” Beau muttered, but there was no real heat to her voice, no true indication of annoyance. It seemed that she was bickering almost out of habit instead of for any real reason, but Caleb didn’t begrudge her for that. He understood. Somehow, even with Yasha and Caduceus and all the others still walking with them, the loneliness still clung to the top of the hill like a burial shroud. Every sound was distant, quieter and muffled. It had been quiet on the hilltop ever since Caleb had arrived, but it had never been more apparent than now, when the sound of so many other people should have helped to break the still, clammy air, but didn’t. Somehow, it just made everyone feel even further away. Somehow, it just made everything worse.

No one spoke up as they made their way to the cemetery. They arrived before it in silence, with not even the birdsong of Yasha’s grave to herald their arrival, and came to a stop just before where the brambles still lay thick and twisted above the path, barring entry to the graveyard beyond.

“Do your freaky ghost talking,” Beau muttered, jerking her head towards the tangled brambles. “Do your- I don’t know, have another little chat with Molly or whatever. See if he can get these to move.”

Caleb didn’t even bother trying to mention that it might not work. He didn’t bother saying that he had never done this specifically before, that he had only come out here once before, that Mollymauk may recognise his voice and his language but that the brambles may not even be under his control at all. There was no point in not trying. The worst that could happen would be that it didn’t work, and that the graveyard would remain entombed by brambles, shielding its occupants from any who may come close.

The best that could happen, though…

Caleb swallowed, wetting his throat. “ _Hallo,_ Mollymauk,” he called out, his voice ringing clear through the still and silent air. _“Es ist nur uns. Es ist nur mich. Beauregard ist doch hier, and auch Yasha, Nott, Fjord, Jester, und Caduceus. Wir brauchen zu deiner Grabe gehen. Bitte, lass uns da gehen.”_

“What did you say?” Jester whispered from behind him. “Did you say my name?”

“I did. I was just asking him to let us through.”

“Does that work?” Fjord asked, sounding dubious. “You just- you just speaking to him out loud? Do ghosts listen to that?”

Caleb shrugged. “Mollymauk seems to,” he replied quietly. “Though I am… I do not know if he will today. I do not know if he- if he heard me…”

At his side, Beau cleared her throat. “I mean,” she started, sounding uncertain, “if you- if you think it’ll help, I guess I could… I could try to talk to him? Maybe? He knew me better than he knew you.”

“You might as well,” Caleb said, nodding. “It seemed to work in Lucien’s bedroom.”

“You talking to Molly in fuckin’ _Zemnian_ seemed to work in Lucien’s bedroom,” Beau muttered, but she stepped forwards all the same. Between her hands, the flowers were as bright as blood.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence.

“Hey!” Beau shouted abruptly. “Molly! Dickhead! Let us through to your grave so that Jester can draw a dick on it and I can leave flowers on it and we can be all mopey and shit! And don’t act like that isn’t exactly what you would have fucking wanted, you asshole! I know that you still want everyone to fuckin’ flock to you even though you’re dead!”

“ _Bitte,”_ Caleb added, his voice joining Beau’s. “ _Bitte,_ Mollymauk, _Liebling._ Please let us through.”

“Dickhead!”

“Molly,” Yasha interrupted. Her voice was quiet, quieter even than Caleb’s had been, but somehow it broke the silence more cleanly than even Beau’s shouting had. She took a step forward, positioning herself just ahead of Beau and Caleb on the path. “Molly,” she said again. “Please. Let us through. It’s just us. You know us.” She paused. “You know me,” she added, so quietly that Caleb felt that he wasn’t supposed to hear it. “You know who I am, Molly. Let me say goodbye. Let all of us say goodbye.”

For a long, cloying second, nothing on the top of the hill moved. The trees seemed to cease in their quiet whispering, their branches falling still and static, and what little sound there had been around them seemed to fade entirely, lapsing into a silence so completely absolute that Caleb felt as though he were drowning in it. It filled his lungs with heavy, swirling fog, choking back any words that he may even think of saying, making it so that he could barely breathe but for the weight of it.

And then, just when Caleb thought that nothing would happen at all, he heard a soft noise on the path, and looked up to see the brambles starting to move.

Like the fingers of a clenched fist finally uncurling and relaxing, the brambles started to shift. They moved slowly and creakily at first, appearing to be swaying in the breeze that had faded since Yasha had spoken, but then their pace increased until they were coiling back in on themselves, twisting and writhing in a way that reminded Caleb of the shadows that he had now encountered more than once. There was something in the pattern of their action, in how they twisted together and seemed to loop within themselves that made him think of the shadows that had swarmed around himself and Beauregard only the previous day. There was something in their movement that was distinctly _Molly._

“ _Gods_ ,” Beau breathed softly. She took a step forwards, her hands white-knuckled around the bundle of flowers, and stopped by Yasha’s side, watching as the brambles before them peeled back from the path, opening up a space for them to walk through. No one walked into it but the brambles didn’t seem to notice; they just kept unfurling, disentangling themselves from the low stone walls of the cemetery and uprooting themselves from the ground until, for the first time since Caleb had arrived at the house, there was clear ground to walk on. Slowly, like melting frost, they drew back from the older headstones and tombs until only one remained covered and then, after a pause, that tomb too was freed.

The last bramble uncurled reluctantly from Mollymauk’s grave, and silence filled the space once more.

Caduceus was the first to speak. “Huh,” he said quietly. “Well, how about that. I can’t say I’ve ever seen plants do something like that before, but I suppose it makes sense.”

Somehow, his words seemed to break the frozen silence that everyone else was held in.

“Yeah,” Beau muttered. She reached up, rubbing a hand across her face, and gave a short, sharp nod. “I- yeah, fuck, I haven’t- me neither, Cad.”

“They must have really liked you, Miss Yasha.”

Yasha shrugged awkwardly. “Oh, I don’t know about that. Caleb and Beau spoke too. They could have been responding to any of us.”

“Mm. They responded to you the best, though. You must have been very special to him.”

Just for a moment, Caleb thought he saw Yasha smile. “Thank you,” she murmured quietly. “I- I think that I was. I hope that I was.”

“You were,” Beau spoke up. “We both- we both were.” She reached out, taking Yasha’s hand and lacing their fingers together. “Now, come on. Let’s go say goodbye to him, yeah?”

There was a short pause.

“Yeah,” Yasha replied.

Together, she and Beau started walking down the path, the others following after. Beneath their feet, small branches crunched like breaking bones.

Molly’s gravestone, Caleb saw as they approached, was almost surprisingly plain. Aside from Molly’s name, date of birth and death, and a few other short lines etched into it, it was almost entirely blank, free from the decorations that Caleb had assumed would have been carved across it. It didn’t take him long to notice that the headstone matched the others in the cemetery, standing tall and proud above a body-sized rectangular tomb of rough, dark grey stone, but Caleb couldn’t shake the unease he felt looking at it. It didn’t feel _right_. It wasn’t a headstone for Molly, not really. It was too plain, too bland, too _boring_. It held none of the shine and brightness that Molly must have held while he was alive.

It wasn’t a grave for Mollymauk, yet his was his grave all the same.

“Beau?” Caleb heard Jester say. “Do you… would it be okay if I said a few words to Molly? I know he was your friend but I- I wanted to say something, if that’s alright.”

“Yeah, sure,” Beau replied. She stepped back, gesturing vaguely at the tomb. “You- yeah. Go for it. Molly wouldn’t care. He would’ve liked the extra attention.”

“Thank you.”

With a small, wavering smile, Jester stepped forwards.

“Thank you for talking to me,” she said, her tone unusually subdued. She twisted her hands together as she spoke, shifting a little from side to side with her tail swaying behind her. Around her, her skirts fluttered in the soft breeze; one of the few spots of colour in the faded and overgrown cemetery. “You were- you were actually the first ghost I’ve ever _really_ talked to, you know? I mean, I know a _lot_ about talking to ghosts, and contacting ghosts, and I’m super, _super_ prepared, but you were- I’d never spoken to a ghost before you! That was my first ever séance!” Jester gave a quiet sniffle, reaching up to wipe at her eyes. “You were a really good ghost to talk to,” she whispered. “And I’m- I’m really glad that you spoke to us, and that you- and that Beau got to talk to you, and I’m really sorry that I don’t know how Yasha came back because I _should_ because I’m the one who knows ghost things like this but I _don’t_ and I don’t think Caduceus does either and I- and I would _really_ have liked to have known you when you were alive, Molly. You seem- you seem like you were really good fun. Beau liked you a lot, and I trust Beau to have good opinions of people.” Jester sniffled again, rubbing at her eyes once more before stepping back from the grave. “Bye, Molly,” she murmured. “I hope you’re not lonely where you are.” Jester raised her head, looking back over her shoulder at Beau with tears shining in her eyes. “Was that alright?”

“Yeah,” Beau mumbled, lifting a hand to rub at her own eyes. “Yeah, that was- yeah. Molly would’ve loved that, the prick.” She gave a short, damp laugh. “Always liked getting extra attention and meeting new people, you know? I bet he’s the smuggest fucking ghost of all time right now, basically getting a second fucking send-off.” She laughed again but it sounded harsher this time, and the sound of it died on her tongue. “Second fuckin’ funeral,” she murmured, and then she stepped forwards, taking Jester’s place by the graveside.

“Are you going to say goodbye to him?” Jester asked.

Beau shook her head. “Nah. I’ve- I’ve already done that once. I’m just- I want to bring him peace, you know. And me- me being all sad and mopey _again_ isn’t gonna help with that, so I’m- I’m- yup. I’m just gonna- yeah.” She exhaled in a long sigh and took another step forward, reaching up to place the bundle of flowers on top of Molly’s tomb. They looked unusually bright against the dark stone, colourful and vibrant and _alive_ for all that they were only made of fabric. They didn’t look like they belonged there, in that dark and gloomy space so hung about with memories and sorrow. Molly didn’t belong there. None of them did.

A soft breeze sighed through the cemetery. When it touched the flowers, their petals fluttered like butterflies wings.

“So, we figured out what happened to you,” Beau started. She kicked gently at the ground, not looking up at Molly’s headstone as she continued to speak, her words soft and quiet. “We- I dunno how much of it you overheard when we were at Yasha’s but I’m, um… I don’t know, I think Jester said something about how you can’t go super far from the house without us helping you, so… yeah. Yasha’s back, though. You can see that. Yasha’s back, and we- we think we know what happened to you. We think we know why you’re- why you’re here, and who killed you, and all of that shit, and we- we…” She trailed off, taking a breath, and then continued. “We think that it’ll bring you peace. We _hope_ that it’ll bring you peace. We think- I don’t know. We’re just- yeah. We needed to let you know. So, uh, if you’re, like, floating about, being all ghosty and shit... just listen, alright?”

There was no response from the hill, but Caleb watched as Beau shivered abruptly and, at her side, curled her hand as though she was holding something.

“It was Lucien,” she said simply. “He hired that guy, that asshole Lorenzo, to kill you, just because he didn’t want your bad reputation marring his name or some absolute fucking bullshit like that. There was some other stuff too, but the big bit was… it was just that. It was just that he gave _that much_ of a fuck about his precious fuckin’ name and his precious fuckin’ business and apparently you were _expendable_ or some shit like that and we- and we…” Beau trailed off, swallowing. On her cheeks, Caleb could see the tears falling. “It’s shit,” she whispered quietly. “It’s really, really shit, because you’re dead now. And we know what happened, and we know who did it and why, but we don’t- we don’t know enough about ghosts or whatever to know if you’ll come back. And I want you to, Molly. I really, really want you to. I miss you. I miss you so fucking much.”

There was no sound up on the hilltop. Even the breeze had ceased the blow, stilling the trees in the whispers and encasing the entire cemetery in silence until it felt almost dream-like, adrift and separate from the rest of the world. The only sound was Beau’s breaths and the soft sound of her reaching out to gently pat the tomb before turning and joining the others. She didn’t look up as she came to stop by Yasha’s side, instead just gesturing towards the tomb.

“Yasha,” she said. “Do you- do you want to say anything?”

Yasha shook her head. “I- no,” she said softly. Her words were quieter, quieter even than Beau’s had been, but Caleb could still feel the bone-deep sorrow and loss that encased them like lace. “Not now. I will- I’ll come back later, I think. I can’t- I can’t. Not now. Not here.”

“I understand,” Beau replied. “You- it’s personal, right?”

“Yeah. It’s personal.”

“Yeah. You- yeah. Caleb?”

“Hm?” Caleb hummed, turning slightly to look at Beau with a frown. She nodded towards the tomb, her expression sombre.

“Are you- I mean, you and Molly are kinda- you’re close now, right? Do you want to say anything?”

“… I would like to do that,” Caleb replied quietly. “If that- if that would be alright. I know that he was your friend-”

“Yeah, and he’s become your weird ghost-buddy,” Beau interrupted. “Just- I know you’re going to be leaving soon, right? After- after everything. You might as well say bye to him now. I know he means a lot to you, and that he likes you, and you like him, and I’d feel pretty fucking shitty if _I_ was in that sort of situation and wasn’t allowed to say or do anything. And besides, it’s not like it’s my grave. We all saw the brambles. If Molly wanted you to fuck off he would make it known. So… yeah. Go for it. Go say your words.”

Caleb smiled. It was a small thing, faint and barely there, but it existed all the same. He reached out, taking Beauregard’s hand in his own and giving it a quick squeeze. “Thank you, Beauregard.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Now go speak to him. See if you can convince him to rise from his grave.”

“… _Ja_. I’ll- I will see what I can do.”

Caleb felt Beau squeeze his hand before dropping it and then, alone, he approached Molly’s tomb. He didn’t know what he was going to say. He didn’t have any particular plans, had no real words that immediately came to mind. Molly meant too much, _was_ too much for Caleb to easily convey in words. He had known that this was coming and yet he hadn’t let himself dwell on it, hadn’t let himself think about it or plan for it or do anything that meant that he would in any way know what to say when he was stood here, before Mollymauk’s tomb, for the first and last time.

What good would planning have done, though? What good would writing a script have done? Molly wouldn’t have cared for that, and Caleb knew it. None of his interactions with Molly had been planned. Even the séance, organised in advance as it had been, had felt natural when conversation was taking place. He’d had questions then, had had things that he had wanted to ask Molly, but there had been no set, certain plan. Nothing about Molly had ever been set or certain. There was no reason to change that now

Caleb opened his mouth, and let himself speak.

“I’m sorry,” he said. The words were quiet, soft and barely audible above the distant sound of the breeze whispering through the branches of the trees, but Caleb heard himself say them. He didn’t know if the others did. He hoped that they didn’t. These words, what he was saying… they weren’t for them. They weren’t for Beau, or for Jester, or even for Yasha. They were for Mollymauk, and Mollymauk alone. “I am- I’m sorry. I am sorry that I never knew you, Mollymauk. I am sorry that I did not believe that you were real when I first came here. I am sorry- I am sorry that it took me so long to acknowledge you. I am sorry that I am the one who disrupted your peace, and I am sorry that I am the one who distressed you on a number of occasions, and I am- I am-” Caleb swallowed. At the corners of his eyes, he could feel the tears waiting to fall. “I am sorry that I never knew you,” he continued quietly, “I am sorry that I never truly will.”

After this, he would only ever know Mollymauk in stories. He still hoped, blindly and numbly, for some miraculous return, but the bead of hope lodged within his chest was a small one, crushed down to almost nothing by the cloying, heavy weight of loss that blanketed the entire hill. When this was finished, and all was said and done, he would likely only hear of Mollymauk from Beau and Yasha’s memories. After this, he would only ever hear of a Mollymauk who he had never known, and who had never known him.

In Caleb’s chest, he felt his heart start to twist.

“I am fond of you, you know,” he whispered. He smiled a little as he spoke, a small, humourless thing that didn’t reach his eyes. Beneath his hand, the gravestone was as cold as Molly’s skin. It didn’t feel anything like it. “Well, I suppose you already know that. I have not, ah, I have not exactly been subtle in my feelings, I suppose. But I- _ja_ , I wanted to make it clear. Before you- before you-” Caleb swallowed damply, glancing away. He couldn’t make himself say it. He couldn’t make himself accept what was going to happen next.

But he had to.

“Before you leave us,” he forced out. In his throat, the words felt like thorns digging into his skin. “Before you- before I leave here. I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to know that- that you are important to me, Mollymauk, in a way that I would never have expected when I first came here.”

As if he needed to say that. As if Molly didn’t already know. It felt important, though; Caleb had felt the words waiting in his chest, heavy and jagged and honest and painful, and it hurt to say them yet it still felt good. It felt right. He would likely never see Molly again after this, not in the way that he knew him. He wouldn’t see Molly in mirrors, or in dreams, or in flashes of purple in the corner of his eye. He would never have the chance to step into the wonderful peace of their between-space, and take Molly’s hands, and press his lips to Molly’s, and tell him how he felt with no barrier in their way. This was the best chance that he would get.

This was the only chance that he would get.

“I think I love you,” he whispered, so quietly that he himself could barely hear it. “I think I- _ja_. I do not know. But you are- you matter to me, Mollymauk. A lot. Maybe I’ll come back some day,” he continued, rubbing his thumb over the smooth stone. “Maybe I will pay Beauregard a visit, hm? I will- we will not be able to communicate as we normally do, but I will- it will be nice to visit this place again. It will be nice to visit _you_.”

_It will be pointless to visit here again_ , some insidious part of his mind whispered. _It will be pointless to return to Alfield. It will be pointless to return to the house. The house will likely go to Lucien, and there is nothing for you in the town. There is nothing for you here. What you have with Mollymauk never existed, and it never will_.

Except, Caleb thought, that that wasn’t entirely true. He didn’t turn to look at the people standing behind him, but he could feel the weight of their gaze all the same. There was something for him in Alfield, even without Mollymauk. Mollymauk’s death may have been what drew him here, may have been what first crystallised his relationship with Jester and Beau, but even with Molly entirely gone and passed on, the bonds that Caleb had now with Jester and Beau and all of the others wouldn’t just fade into dust. He knew them, knew them better than he knew many people back in Rexxentrum. They were his friends, now. Even without Molly to tie them together, they were still friends. They would continue to be friends.

If he were to return to Alfield in the future, there would still be people waiting to see him again.

But not Molly.

Never Molly.

With one last touch to the smooth stone of the headstone, Caleb stepped back. He could feel the tears winding about his throat now, choking him up with salt, and he didn’t feel like saying any more. There was nothing else that he could say, was nothing that could make this situation any better. He had done what little he could. He had asked Molly to stay the previous day. There was no point in repeating his words now.

Against his shoulder, he felt Beauregard’s hand coming to rest in a small, comforting gesture. Caleb reached up without thinking, covering her hand with his own, and continued to stare numbly at the grave as Caduceus stepped forwards and murmured a few words, followed by Fjord and Nott. He didn’t hear them. He couldn’t hear anything beyond the awful, aching silence, couldn’t hear anything beyond his own breathing and the sound of his pulse drumming in his ears. He had said his goodbye to Molly. He had said his goodbye to this place. He had not finished his job yet, but he would, and then he would leave, and he would leave Mollymauk behind him for good.

Finally, Nott stepped back from the grave. She looked up at Beau, her small face quiet and sombre.

“Beau?” she said quietly. “Do you- I think we’ve all said what we need to. Maybe it’s time for us to-”

“No,” Beau interrupted, shaking her head sharply. “No, no, it’s not- we can’t just _leave,_ Nott. We can’t just- for fucks sake, _Yasha_ came back yesterday after we- after we did this exact same shit at her grave! Who’s to say that Molly won’t?”

“I know, I know, but… we didn’t have to wait for very long with Yasha, did we? She came back almost _immediately_ after Caleb finished talking.”

“There was still a delay!” Beau insisted. “And maybe- look, Molly’s been dead for longer than Yasha was, okay? Maybe it- maybe it takes longer!”

“He was only dead for _a minute_ longer than Yasha,” Fjord pointed out. “That can’t have made that much-”

From within the sealed tomb, there came a loud, abrupt _thump_.

“Oh, hey,” Caduceus said, “that sounded promising-”

There was another loud thump, and then another, and then another, speeding up until it sounded as though something – some _one_ – were hammering against the inside of the tomb.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Beau breathed. “The fucking- it’s got a fucking _lid_ on it, we need to-”

Before she could finish speaking Yasha sprinted forwards. She skidded to a halt beside the tomb, reaching out to shove at the heavy slab that covered the top. “Beau!” she called. “Jester! Give me a hand, please!”

“Of course, of course, of course!” Jester replied, already running after Beau as she too dashed towards the tomb, joining Yasha in shoving against the slab. Between the three of them they managed to start moving it, the awful sound of stone scraping across stone slicing through the air like a jagged blade before, with a loud _thud_ , it slid off entirely, crashing to the ground on the other side of the tomb.

A single purple hand reached up from the inside of the tomb, and then everything was a blur of motion.

Immediately Yasha reached out, grabbing Molly’s hand and physically lifting him from his resting place, crushing him against her form in a tight, squeezing, desperate hug. Caleb barely even saw Molly beneath Yasha’s arms, and a split second later Beau flung herself at the two of them, swearing and cursing even as tears rolled down her face.

Above it all, Caleb could hear the soft, wonderful sound of Mollymauk’s laughter.

“Hey,” he seemed to be saying. “Hey, hey, it’s alright, Beau, you’re- gods, you’re getting snot on my waistcoat, that’s _disgusting_ , you’re so gross-”

“Fuck you,” Beau mumbled. “Fuck you, Molly, you absolute asshole, you fucking- why did it take you so _long?”_

“That lid is really heavy! And it was dark! I thought I was dreaming!”

“You were a fucking _ghost_ and you thought you were _dreaming_?”

“Yes! Anyway, you’re not allowed to blame me for anything I say or do – I just came back from the dead, remember? If I’m not talking straight, blame it on that.”

Beau snorted. “You’ve never done anything straight in your goddamn life,” she muttered, joy seeping through every rough-edged word. “You’ve never- fuck, _Molly_.”

From beneath the tangle of limbs a single purple hand raised, patting gently against Beau’s back.

“I know,” he murmured. “I know, Beau. It’s good to see you too.”

“Asshole,” Beau grumbled again, and then she, too, fell silent as she continued to hug Molly. Caleb couldn’t hear Yasha saying anything but he could see her lips moving, tears likewise rolling down her cheeks as she held Molly as close as she could.

Minutes passed as, on top of Tealeaf Hill, three friends clung together, finally reunited.

The moment was shattered after a period of time by Fjord clearing his throat. Beau peeked an eye open at him but didn’t let go of Molly, only leaning back slightly so that she could see him.

“I hate to break up this sweet moment,” Fjord said, “but… what about Lucien? What about- what about the house, and the will and- what about the fact that he _killed you?”_

Molly barely seemed to notice Fjord’s words.

“Fjord!” he cried out in delight, his eyes going wide as he spotted the half-orc seemingly for the first time since Yasha had lifted him free of his tomb. “My delightfully sexy bartender friend!” He struggled free from Yasha’s tight embrace and half-stumbled his way over to Fjord, flinging his arms around him and squeezing him in a hug. “How _are_ you?”

“I’m- I- _what?”_ Fjord managed to say. “I’m- yes, I’m fine, I’m absolutely fine, I’m just- Molly, you were _dead_. Lucien- he _killed_ you, and now you’re back and you-”

“We can talk about my brother later,” Molly replied, leaning back from Fjord and holding him at arm’s length for a second before suddenly stretching up to press a kiss to his forehead. “Right now, we have much more important things to talk about, like the fact that I am, unless you failed to notice, apparently alive again! Which is wonderful news, as I’m sure we can all agree.”

“I’m not disagreeing with that, Molly, it’s excellent to see you again, but I cannot help but wonder about the matter of the- of the will, and the house, and-”

“Um,” Caleb said, speaking up for the first time since he’d seen Molly stepping out of his grave. The word felt strange on his tongue, awkward and clumsy as though he wasn’t meant to be speaking at all, but he pushed past it. “I- actually, I think Molly will still be getting the house. I have not- I didn’t manage to find a more recent will since the one written before Molly’s- since the last one that Gustav wrote, so I think that- I think- I…”

Molly turned to face Caleb, his eyes wide, and Caleb felt the words falter and fade in his throat.

Mollymauk was beautiful. Caleb had known that, had known that ever since the first time he saw a portrait of Molly, but it was different now. In the soft winter sunlight Molly almost seemed to shine, the delicate stitching of his peacock waistcoat catching the light and sparkling in gold and silver and bright kingfisher blue. His tattoos were brighter than Caleb had ever seen them, standing out against purple cheeks flushed darker by the biting chill of the air, and his hair hung in a riotous mess of loose purple-indigo curls around his face. He was stunning, and he was real, and he was looking at Caleb as though he had hung the moon for him.

“Caleb,” he breathed softly, a smile starting to cross his face. “Caleb, you’re- you’re- _fuck_ , darling, you’re _here_.”

Caleb smiled back. He couldn’t help it. Molly’s smile was beautiful, just as it always had been, but somehow it was impossibly more beautiful now in the pale winter sunlight. All of Mollymauk was beautiful.

“ _Hallo_ ,” he said quietly. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to walk up to Molly, wanted to sweep him up in a hug and press kiss after kiss to his lips and feel the warmth of his body against his own and _know_ , know beyond any possible degree of doubt, that Molly was real and present and _alive_. He wanted to cry. He wanted to shout.

He wanted _Molly_.

He didn’t do anything, though. Even beneath the joy and delight now swirling through his veins like summer sunlight he could still feel doubt and anxiety worrying at the back of his mind, wondering how much of his time as a ghost Molly remembered. Yasha had said that she remembered most of it, but that it had seemed fuzzy, and Caleb couldn’t help but worry that all of their time spent together, all of their closeness, would be lost and gone now, faded to nothing by the return of Molly’s life.

But then he saw the look on Molly’s face, saw the delight in his eyes and the softness of his smile and the way one of his hands twitched gently at his side, as though he were trying to reach for Caleb but was stopping himself, and all doubt faded. He knew Molly. Molly knew him. Molly knew him, and he recognised him, and he had called Caleb _darling_ in the same wonderful, unspeakably soft way that he’d said it in their shared dreams. What they had, what they had experienced together… it hadn’t faded. It hadn’t been lost to memory the moment Yasha had wrenched back the slab to reveal Molly lying there, blinking in the sunlight. It was still there. Caleb could feel it now, stretching between himself and Mollymauk like strands of thread pulled tight, winding closer and closer until, almost without his permission, his feet started moving, carrying him across the ground towards Mollymauk. As he approached he saw Molly’s hands raise, saw his smile widen into a grin, and then Molly’s hands were pressed to his waist, his own hands on Molly’s hips.

Through the fabric of his shirt, Caleb could feel the warmth of Molly’s hands.

“ _Hallo_ ,” he murmured again. He couldn’t look away from Molly. Molly was so close, was mere inches away from Caleb, and he was _real_. He was really, truly, utterly real; Caleb could feel the warmth of his breath brushing against his lips, could smell the faintest hint of incense and lavender and opium that still clung to his skin and clothing, could hear the soft inhale of breath that Molly gave when Caleb rubbed his thumbs absently over Molly’s hips. He could feel Molly in a way that he never had before.

Molly was there.

Molly was real.

Molly was alive.

“Caleb,” Molly said, and whatever he was about to say next was cut off as in one sudden, desperate move, Caleb surged forward and pressed his lips to Molly’s in a hot, burning kiss. It was messy, awkward and rough, with no real finesse to speak of, but Caleb didn’t care. Molly was _there_. He was alive, his skin warm beneath Caleb’s hands and his lips hot and yielding beneath Caleb’s as he melted into the kiss, his arms raising to wrap around Caleb’s shoulders and pull him in closer.

“What about Lucien?” Fjord asked again. “He could still be out there – I can’t imagine that he would just vanish into nothingness after killing his brother. What if he finds out about this and comes back? Why hasn’t he come back already?”

Caleb broke away from the kiss. “We can get to him later,” he answered, feeling very nearly delirious and drunk as he continued to stare at Molly. “We can- we have evidence. We can handle him, I am sure. He doesn’t matter.”

“He doesn’t _matter_?” Fjord repeated incredulously. “Caleb, are you honestly suggesting that- _ow_!”

“Let them have their moment!” Jester hissed. “Look how cute they are!”

“Caleb,” Molly said, seemingly not noticing everyone who was staring at them. His voice was nearly breathless, bright and delighted and absolutely beautiful, and Caleb adored him so, so much. “Caleb, I’m- do you-” He paused, ducking his head and pressing another quick kiss to Caleb’s lips which quickly turned into another one before he forced himself to lean back. “ _Love_ ,” he said, his voice half a laugh, and Caleb had to stop himself from kissing him again and tasting the sound of it on his lips. “I’m- Caleb, darling, you’re very sweet, but I need to- I need to ask you something.”

“What?”

“Would you join me for dinner?” Molly asked, his words all tumbling out of him in a blur. “For a date? We have- I’ve seen plenty of you, dear, but for all that you’ve been living in my house for the last few weeks I feel like there’s still a lot about you to learn. I would very much like to get to know you a lot better, if you’d care to join me.”

Caleb smiled.

“Mollymauk,” he said, feeling sunlight spreading through his heart, “I would like nothing more.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The gorgeous art this chapter was done by [@heidzdraws](https://twitter.com/heidzdraws)!
> 
> Remember how after Twine I said I was done with Widomauk? Well, that was clearly a lie, but I hope you enjoyed this latest instalment of 'grubby human and hot tiefling fall for each other'. This has definitely been one of my most challenging fics to write so far given my absolute lack of experience in not just writing horror, but reading horror, watching horror, or even contemplating horror, so I hope that you found it sufficiently spooky. Reading your comments, reactions, and theories along the way has been an absolute delight x
> 
> So, what's next in terms of writing? I'm going to be taking a little break for a while to get the old creativity juice back, but after that I'm actually going to be leaning away from Critical Role for a bit. If you follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/crunchywrites) or [tumblr](https://crunchywrites.tumblr.com/) you may have noticed that I've been rather getting into _The Magnus Archives_ , and the next fic is going to be for this podcast. If you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend it - it's a fantastically well-written horror podcast with a gorgeous story to it. I hope at least some of you decide to check out my Magnus fic when I start working on it.
> 
> Once again, thank you all for reading, commenting, and (hopefully) enjoying this fic!
> 
> \- Crunchy x

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my two wonderful betas, [Eileen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelneena) and [E ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebookishdark)! My love and thanks to you both are endless <3 Thanks also to crunchtown and the Widomauk server for encouraging me to just write two fics at the same time and try not to die.
> 
> Fic comments are always welcome and help to fuel the motivation! Or, if you'd like to talk to me elsewhere, please feel welcome to message me at my [tumblr](https://crunchywrites.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/crunchywrites)!


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